Denis MacShane: Is it not a fact that we have elected two Jew-hating racists to represent us in the European Parliament—we have done so in the form of British National party electors—even though in Yorkshire the BNP got fewer votes in 2004? What is the reason? In the 2004 European Parliament elections, there was an all-postal ballot and almost twice as many people voted. I understand that there are some fiddles in postal voting, but we must look much more seriously at encouraging all-postal ballots, because that is the best way to prevent the fascists from being elected to represent our nation.

Gary Streeter: The Electoral Commission is carrying out a survey of the effectiveness of the recent elections to the European Parliament, and I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that a number of factors have to be taken into account. However, the electoral system that we put in place for future European Parliaments, or for any election that takes place in the United Kingdom, is a matter for this House, not for the Electoral Commission.

Anne McIntosh: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Does he agree that there should be a moratorium on the imposition of those charges until a complete impact assessment has taken place? Will he support the early-day motion to that effect which stands in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends? Will he also look at the formula that Yorkshire Water, which serves my constituency, has come up with? It causes the least damage where the introduction of those charges applies.

David Taylor: The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of which I am a member, is undertaking a review of Ofwat's charging policies, and we had the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), before us yesterday. He made it quite clear that Ofwat has not only a brief but a duty to ensure that charging systems are fair and avoid creating hardship. Can I suggest to the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, that the Church Commissioners make strong representations to ensure that Ofwat delivers on what he described as encouraging noises?

The hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

Linda Riordan: Two weeks ago, voter apathy and electoral disengagement hit an all-time low; turnout plummeted to 16 per cent. in my region of Yorkshire. I recently met the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), to discuss my plans to introduce early voting in the UK. There was early voting in the recent American election, in which voters flocked to the polls over a two-week period. Clearly, one day's access to the polls is not enough in today's society. Will the Electoral Commission therefore discuss plans to introduce early voting?

Gary Streeter: The Electoral Commission informs me that it is not opposed in principle to moving polling day to the weekend. However, it does not support such a change at present because there is a lack of compelling evidence to show that such an arrangement would be more convenient or accessible for electors, and increase turnout. As has been said, there are a number of reasons why voters do not turn up to vote at elections. Many relate to the political parties and our conduct in the House. All of us—not only the Electoral Commission—should consider how to increase voter turnout in this country.

Ben Chapman: Can my hon. Friend assure me that when the commissioners look at expenditure in cash terms there will be a keen prioritisation and selection of expenditure categories, because that is going to be vital? Can he also tell me that the selection of those priorities will reflect the needs of the 21st century Church?

Simon Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I welcome him to his new responsibilities, as does my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who spoke earlier.
	Will the hon. Gentleman pass on to the commission a specific request that two matters be looked at? First, did the facility work for people who are European Union citizens and are allowed to vote here but have to fill in a form to make it clear that they are going to use their vote only in this country rather than in their country of origin, and how many people used it and so on? The second matter is how accessible the venues for voting are generally. I still take the view that they are often in hidden-away places that long-standing locals might know, not places where most of the public go in the course of their daily business.

Anne McIntosh: I am most grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for that full answer. Will she support my private Member's Bill, which will be considered tomorrow, in which I call for more cases to appear before the courts when there are persistent offenders or when the goods taken from a shop are of high value? The impact of the credit crunch has been a higher incidence of shoplifting and shop theft, and I know that the Government are concerned about that. If a first-time offender is involved or goods of only a small value are stolen, I can understand the value of a fixed penalty notice, but the thrust of my Bill is to allow the cases that would best benefit from coming before a court to do so. That would allow for restorative justice, and for the offender to get some treatment if it is—

Vera Baird: I have a sense that the hon. Lady and I are growing old with her asking me questions about shoplifting and me trying to answer them even though we do not have the figures that she perpetually seeks. She knows that whether penalty notices are being used totally appropriately is a constant concern within Government, and we keep it under review. She makes a powerful point about the impact of the credit crunch, which has to come into all our considerations. She knows that the decision whether to prosecute has a public interest component, and I am reasonably satisfied that all those factors are kept under review and applied consistently and conscientiously.
	On the specific question whether I will support the hon. Lady's Bill tomorrow, I am afraid that I will be in Redcar.

David Heath: Has not the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) got an important point? The problem with fixed penalty notices, particularly for shoplifting, is that the person involved does not have contact with the prosecution authorities or the courts. The underlying reasons for the offending behaviour are never recognised, so they are not dealt with. It seems to me, and I think to a lot of people, that if we are stop those who shoplift because they have a drugs habit or extreme social difficulties, it is better that they are placed before a court, which can take appropriate action. Fixed penalty notices get in the way of doing that.

Vera Baird: It does depend on what kind of offender is before the authorities. Where there is a clear need that has a criminogenic component—drugs, drink or whatever it is—I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is appropriate that that be tackled. Otherwise, there is no getting to the root of the problem. It is really intended that penalty notices should be used when those factors are not present.
	There is a scale as to when diversionary penalties of one kind or another are intended to be used—knowing the hon. Gentleman's responsibilities, I am sure that he has seen it—with a penalty notice for disorder right at the bottom. Where particular causes become obvious, there are such things as conditional cautions right at the top of the scale, which then leads quickly into court. I agree in principle that the hon. Gentleman is right, but we need to ensure that PNDs are used against the right people. They are a useful tool for the police, as they can deal on the spot with a minor offence that does not show any signs of the causes that he mentions, and as such they have considerable use, but in principle he is quite right.

Fiona Mactaggart: I thank the Solicitor-General for that reply. In February, I received a reply from a Justice Minister claiming that 59 per cent. of cases prosecuted as rape result in a conviction for rape or another offence. However, my hon. and learned Friend knows that that hides massive differences between police areas. In Dorset, fewer than one in 60 women secured a conviction for an attack when they reported rape, but in Cleveland, the area that my hon. and learned Friend represents, almost one in every five rapes reported to the police results in a conviction. Why does that difference exist and what can we do to ensure that every area of the country meets and exceeds the standards that Cleveland has achieved, so that women who are raped can get justice?

Vera Baird: I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend's diligent work on rape, about which she shares a powerful interest with me. There are two sorts of figures. One is the figure that she cited of around 59 per cent., which relates to those going from charge to conviction, once there has been a charge. The much lower figures, especially those that the Fawcett Society puts forward, are from complaint to charge; there is a much higher drop-out rate before cases get to court. There are disparities between Cleveland and other areas. I am proud of Cleveland, though even Sean Price, the chief constable—pleased though he is to top the poll, as it were, for conviction rates for rape—feels that he has further to go before he is performing adequately. None the less, he is to be complimented.
	My hon. Friend is right that the figures suggest that less attention is paid to that highly important offence in some areas. Of course, the figures have flaws because complaints and outcomes are likely to be separated by years, so they will not cover the same cases. However, one cannot disguise the fact that the figures are inevitably indicative of a difference in prioritising. The rape support group—the Home Office component of the partnership team, which also comprises the CPS—will talk to police forces specifically about that. To put it bluntly and crudely, the idea is to find out what is working well in one police area, take it to another where they are not doing so well and persuade them that they must implement it to attain much better results. However, having said that—

Gary Streeter: May I support the campaign of the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on this serious offence? In addition to disparities in various police regions in the United Kingdom, is not it the case that conviction rates in the UK are significantly lower than those of many of our European counterparts? Does the Solicitor-General know the reason for that? Has any thorough research been conducted to ascertain what lessons we can learn from Europe to try to improve conviction rates in this country?

Vera Baird: I am thankful for my hon. Friend's concern and support on this topic. I do not know about that case in Derbyshire, which sounds as if it may be a cause for concern. If he would be interested in telling me about it, I will look into it and draw it to the attention of the CPS, so that it can investigate further and, if there is a need, accelerate the time of its visit.

Vera Baird: Reducing the harm caused by fraud to individuals and businesses is a key priority for the Serious Fraud Office, although it investigates serious and complex fraud whomever it is aimed at. Last month Richard Alderman, the director of the SFO, met representatives of Transparency International and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as it is now called, to discuss the ways in which the SFO could help small and medium-sized enterprises in that respect.

Rosie Cooper: I thank the Solicitor-General for that answer. Could she tell us a little more about what the Serious Fraud Office is doing for the victims of fraud and about how those people are receiving justice? Following on from the previous question, can she also say briefly whether she believes it has enough resources?

Vera Baird: The SFO has a high regard for the importance of looking after witnesses in fraud cases. Indeed, I have taken a personal interest in this. The Crown Prosecution Service does a good deal in this regard now, and its performance rate on the dropping of cases at the door of the court because of the non-appearance of witnesses, and so on, has got much better because of the attention that it pays to victims and witnesses. The SFO deals with a completely different kind of case, of course, but it none the less well understands the need to ensure that witnesses and victims are supported. I have met two small business men who were the victims of fraud and who felt that, when their cases came to court two years ago, they were not treated as well as they could have been. We have learned lessons from that, as well. I do not think that the resources question that my hon. Friend has raised will take away from the effort that is now going to be put more fully into protecting victims and witnesses.

Vera Baird: The personal damage that fraud can cause, particularly to vulnerable people is recognised. Historically, it has perhaps been seen as a crime that attacks victims slightly less than other crime, but being defrauded is very undermining and can sometimes tip people into as poor a state as they would find themselves in if they had been seriously assaulted. We are pursuing the protection of vulnerable victims, and when such vulnerability exists, the Crown will draw it to the attention of the judge. Guidelines on sentencing usually allow for aggravation to follow from the fact that a victim is particularly vulnerable, and that can increase the sentence.

Vera Baird: I do not think that it is an entirely new principle. This is not about omission; it is about negligently failing to take steps to prevent bribery. There are businesses that are in pole position to see when bribery is going on, and if they choose to turn away, or if they do not have sufficient procedures in place to prevent it, it is probably a poor situation to say that they have a valid defence. Of course they should be under an obligation to prevent bribery from damaging themselves and others, and they should be punished if they do not do so.

Harriet Harman: It was not just the Prime Minister, but all the party leaders who agreed to my right hon. Friend's proposal to put the setting and administration of our allowances on an independent footing. We should all recognise that a public perception has emerged that we arrange the allowances in our own interests rather than in the interest of us doing our job, that we then administer these allowances within the House of Commons and lean on officials to exercise their judgment in our interests. We need to address that perception so that people can have confidence in the high standards of the House of Commons. The proposal to overcome that perception, which has been subject to wide-ranging discussions and on which we will have further such discussions, is to create an independent Parliamentary Standards Authority so that we can no longer vote on our own allowances, which will be set independently; the functions of the Fees Office will be transferred to that authority. That is the remit of the Parliamentary Standards Authority; rather than questions of conduct in this House, it is all about putting our allowances on a proper transparent footing with fair and firm rules that will allow us to get on with our job and give the public confidence that the allowance system is being run independently.

Harriet Harman: The Justice Secretary will meet Sir Christopher Kelly this afternoon, but it might be helpful for Members to see the Parliamentary Standards Authority as the hardware and the inquiry into allowances conducted by the Committee on Standards in Public Life and its recommendations for a new allowance system as the software. If, as I hope, we can legislate for and set up the new independent authority before the House rises for the summer, if Sir Christopher Kelly is able to report in, say, October—obviously when he reports is a matter for him, because he is independent and arranges his timetable and inquiries according to his wishes and those of his committee—and if the Parliamentary Standards Authority can begin work in November, it will then be able to deal with Sir Christopher's proposals on allowances.
	We need to make absolutely sure that we get the system right. I hope that no one will think that we can simply carry on as we were after this crisis. There has been a profound undermining of public confidence, and the best way in which we can handle that is to say "We are not doing this ourselves any more. The allowances are being set independently. What we are doing is getting on with our job of representing our constituents and holding the Executive to account."

Harriet Harman: The Prime Minister has said that he thinks it would be helpful if a parliamentary Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase could address a number of issues relating to the way in which the House operates. We must address the knock that confidence in our Parliament has taken by dealing with the allowance system, but that will also give us an opportunity to look more widely at a number of issues that have been on the agenda and should now be dealt with. We intend to table a motion shortly to establish a Committee which will be able to consider direct representations from the public through e-petitioning—the Procedure Committee has already done a good deal of work on that—as well as how the House itself could decide what constitutes non-Government business, and time-limited Select Committees.

Alan Beith: Does the Leader of the House recognise the important principle that except when a serious criminal offence has been committed, the ultimate court of appeal to decide whether a Member is allowed to continue to sit in the House must be the voters? There have historically been a number of occasions on which a Member of Parliament whom the authorities do not like—a rebellions Member—has been returned at the insistence of the voters.

Nicholas Winterton: The Modernisation Committee has not met for many, many, many months. The Procedure Committee is doing good work and could easily take over the role, functions and responsibilities of the Modernisation Committee. It is chaired by a Back-Bench Member of the House, as are all other Select Committees. Does the deputy Leader of the House accept that the Committee announced by the Prime Minister should consist of those who have experience of the Modernisation Committee? I have been on the Modernisation Committee since it was formed, chaired the Procedure Committee for two Parliaments and have been in this place for some time. It would be helpful if the Leader of the House or her deputy indicated who is to be appointed to this Committee. Why has the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) been selected? He is a member of the governing party. Would not it be better for an Opposition Member to lead the Committee?

David Taylor: The political process may need Whips to give shape and direction to efficient policy implementation, but the parliamentary system allows the Executive to take liberties with democracy, generating an atavistic herd instinct which strangles independent thought and objectivity. Does my hon. Friend agree that an ordered party is best obtained by persuasion rather than patronage, and by consent rather than compulsion? If we are serious about reform, we must abandon the coercion and inducements available to Whips, starting with having more powerful Select Committees chosen by this House.

Alan Duncan: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the forthcoming business, and may I echo what she said about Mr. Speaker. As a recent addition to the House of Commons Commission, I must say that I found the way in which he chaired and administered it to be far better than the public reputation he was afforded by the press.
	Further to the answer given just a moment ago by the deputy Leader of the House, I think everyone would welcome some urgent clarification from the Leader of the House on the business of the House motions that she announced for next Thursday. On 10 June, the Prime Minister said in his statement on constitutional reform that "a special parliamentary commission" will be established, comprising Members from both sides of the House, to advise on necessary reforms of the procedures of the Commons. He seems to want to set up a new committee very much on a whim when there are already structures in the House for considering these issues. It is pretty disgraceful that the Prime Minister should choose to interfere to gain a headline when no consultation whatever has taken place.
	Will the right hon. and learned Lady therefore take this opportunity to confirm whether it is now her intention to abolish the Modernisation Committee? Will this new commission or committee replace it? If so, what is the difference between this new commission or committee and the Procedure Committee, which also deals with the "necessary reforms" of the procedures of this House? Will she confirm that the real difference is not in the functions of the two committees, but in the simple fact that the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) would chair the new one, and not my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight)?
	We were taken by surprise yesterday when Mr. Speaker reported that a new cross-party committee would now be inquiring into the circumstances surrounding the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and even more surprised that that announcement was said to follow from a discussion with only the Government Chief Whip. We were pleased that the Government appear to have backtracked on their attempt to maintain a majority hold over that committee, but given that I have had nothing more than an unacceptable holding response from the right hon. and learned Lady to my letter of 27 April on this matter, will she now tell the House who will be on this committee, when it is likely to report and what is its exact remit? Will it look, for example, at the issue of privilege that we on the Opposition Benches think should be examined in detail and in parallel by the Committee on Standards and Privileges? In a previous answer to one of my questions, the right hon. and learned Lady said that she could not see any objection to that happening.
	Will the right hon. and learned Lady take this opportunity to inform the House when the Government will move the writ for the by-election in Norwich, North? I remind her that the previous Member for that constituency was appointed to the Chiltern Hundreds some days ago and that the writ for the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich was moved much faster.
	The House will note that we have chosen to have our Opposition day debate on Iraq and the inquiry, and I hope that the Leader of the House appreciates how strongly we—and many Labour Members—feel that the Iraq inquiry should be much more public and far broader in composition.
	May we also have a debate on the way that some parking enforcement companies are extorting money on utterly vicious grounds from members of the public? Several cases have come to my attention in which, because of unclear signs in the car park, people have been unwittingly entrapped and their cars clamped. I have to report that the Co-op appears to be one of the most unjust practitioners—

Alan Duncan: Will the House have the chance to call them to account and seek a broader change in the law?
	May we have a debate on levels of numeracy in Government? This subject may be closer to the heart of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is barracking from his seat. Yesterday, we had the unedifying sight of a Prime Minister denying the truth about his own cuts in public spending that are in the Chancellor's most recent Budget. Last week, the Leader of the House was—it is fair to say—ticked off by the UK Statistics Authority for using figures on the gender pay gap that it said would be "misleading" and would
	"undermine public confidence in official statistics".
	This is not the first time that the Government have been criticised for manipulating figures, but judging by the confusion of Ministers over spending, perhaps it is not so much a case of intentional distortion and more an indication of their deficiencies in basic maths.
	Finally, may we agree across the floor of the House that, when it comes to electing a Speaker on Monday, each Member should do so from the best possible principles for Parliament, and their choice should be on that basis and not for any narrow or party reasons?

David Heath: The right hon. and learned Lady referred to the tributes paid to the Speaker yesterday. I think that all the tributes remarked on his generosity of spirit in personal terms, and I can only go along with that; that generosity of spirit was obvious to everyone who knew him. I welcomed Mr. Speaker pointing out in his statement yesterday the lack of leadership and wrong-headed thinking that led to the House rejecting the sensible proposals for reform of our expenses system last year. It was important that he made that point.
	The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) mentioned the Committee, proposed by Mr. Speaker, which is to look at the issue of the police search of Members' offices. I have to say that the right hon. and learned Lady has got herself into a bit of a mess on that. If she remembers, we on the Opposition Benches proposed that there should be no Government majority on that Committee, and that it should be chaired by an Opposition Member. That was rejected by her and her party, and in a whipped vote the Labour party pushed through a motion on 8 December that precluded that option. If the Government have backtracked on that, which is extremely helpful, she needs to put a new motion before the House, because she is bound by a resolution of 8 December that does not allow the Committee to have the composition that it is apparently now to have. Will she put such a motion on the Order Paper next week, so that we can vote on it?
	In another place last week, during proceedings on the Political Parties and Elections Bill, there was an extremely important vote on an amendment in the name of Lord Campbell-Savours. That amendment will be strongly supported in this House by Liberal Democrat Members—and a great number of Labour Members, too, as was indicated by the fact that the Government could not manage to get a Labour majority in the House of Lords on the matter. May we have confirmation that there will be ample time to debate that amendment in this House, and that there will be no attempt by the Government to reverse the decision made in another place on non-domiciled tax exiles providing funding for political parties?
	The Prime Minister yesterday appeared to have a problem understanding how limited his reforms of the banking sector have been, but he was put right in no uncertain terms by the Governor of the Bank of England last night. Given that the Prime Minister does not appear to know what he is doing on banking reform, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not seem to know either, while the Governor of the Bank of England clearly does know, may we have a debate on the issue so that we Members of the House can put forward our ideas on how the banking sector should be regulated in future?
	Lastly, when the Lord High Everything took control of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and it was then abolished, one part of the collateral damage was the presumed demise of the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills. Before it had that title, the Committee did a superb job in this House as the Select Committee on Science and Technology. In fact, it did a particularly superb job when I was a member of it. There are many people, both in the House and outside, who feel that having a Committee that is committed to the interests of science and technology is no bad thing, including the learned societies led by the Royal Society of Chemistry. When the right hon. and learned Lady brings forward her proposals on Select Committees next Thursday, will she ensure that we re-establish a properly constituted Select Committee on Science and Technology, with a cross-cutting brief, to ensure that those interests are properly represented in this House?

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the work on expenses. It would perhaps be helpful if I reminded the House that today there has been progress on transparency, with all expenses claims having gone on the House of Commons website. Shortly, we will bring a Bill before Parliament to create an independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. There is also a reassessment under way of all the past four years' claims, which is being carried out by Sir Thomas Legg and independent accountants. Every single claim will be looked at, and any money that was paid outwith the rules will have to be paid back. We will be able to strengthen parliamentary processes as a result of the work of the Committee that is to be chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). We will get the results of the independent Kelly committee on our allowances, and then the Parliamentary Standards Authority will start work. We have had a major problem, but all the work to solve it is under way.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Committee examining matters in relation to search and seizure and the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). There will be no need for a further resolution of the House, because the resolution of 8 December said:
	"That the committee consist of seven members appointed by the Speaker reflecting the composition of the House."

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend makes an important point. There will be evidence sessions. Tackling child poverty is about not only income levels—from work and benefits—but, importantly, the support services that enable children to get on better in their lives. Children's centres have made a major contribution to equality in this country. There are now more than 3,000 centres, but we want to ensure that there is one in every single neighbourhood. Important discussion about that will take place alongside consideration of the new Child Poverty Bill.

Peter Lilley: If the Leader of the House listened to the "Today" programme this morning, she would have heard the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs giving an interview about climate change projections, on which he is to make a statement after business questions. Although that was deplorable—it is doubly deplorable in the Secretary of State's case, because he is usually meticulous in upholding the traditions of the House, rather than breaching them in such a way—what really worries me is that it was clear that the BBC had accessed the document, or received briefing on its substance, yet hon. Members will have to face it blind when we hear the statement.
	Can we establish a system whereby when Ministers insult the House by giving interviews outside, they release the documents to which they have referred so that all of us may see them in advance of a statement? Alternatively, although perhaps this is a lesser thing, should not all hon. Members, in much the same way as Front Benchers, have access an hour beforehand to documents on which statements are made, as long as we do so in the privacy of the Library? The calibre of debate would be improved if more people could read the relevant documents prior to statements, and that would genuinely improve the scrutiny of documents and legislation in the House.

Phil Willis: First, I thank the Leader of the House for considering carefully the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) raised about the resurrection of the Science and Technology Committee. When the machinery of Government changes took place in 2007, perhaps she was unaware of the strength of feeling not only inside the House but outside it about the need to scrutinise science, engineering and technology effectively. Despite the valiant efforts over the past two years of my Committee's members, to whom I pay tribute, in reality, if a very large Committee—and the Select Committee covering the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be even larger—is not able to get to grips with science and technology not only in government but throughout all the Departments, it will be a huge mistake. I hope that on Thursday, when she brings forward her recommendations, she will bear that in mind and recognise that organisations such as the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering et al are incredibly interested in supporting the Government in their drive to put science at the heart of Government policy.

Greg Knight: Will the Leader of the House think again about the business for next Thursday? On reflection, would not it be better to abandon plans for a parliamentary reform Committee and, instead, abolish the Modernisation Committee and refer all issues of outstanding concern to the Procedure Committee? That would then give us time on Thursday to debate the Procedure Committee's excellent report on e-petitions, which, if implemented, really would reconnect the public with Parliament.

Keith Vaz: Can we have a debate or a statement on the position of British citizens who are the victims of crime abroad and wish to claim compensation? My constituent Luke Laurent was subjected to a vicious stabbing and attack in Cyprus, and has been trying for the past year to claim compensation. After the Tampere discussions and Hague 2, it should be much easier for British citizens to claim compensation in EU countries. Will my right hon. and learned Friend look at the matter to see whether we can have a debate or statement on this important issue?

Jo Swinson: All of us have constituents who have studied hard for years only to leave education this summer with very uncertain job prospects. Graduate unemployment is projected to double, and some estimates are that the number of jobless under-25-year-olds could rise to more than 1 million, so can we have a debate on youth unemployment and what the Government are doing to tackle the problem?

Nicholas Winterton: I am not sure whether the Leader of the House is aware of this, but the courageous Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, will shortly visit the United Kingdom—and, in fact, the House of Commons—next Tuesday. Would it not be possible—and I ask her please not to tell me to put a question next Tuesday to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs—for a Foreign Office Minister to make a statement, indicating the contact that the Government have with South Africa, the African Union and Zimbabwe's other neighbouring states to monitor the progress towards better forms of democracy in that country, so that we might help the people with meaningful aid, as we are currently unable to? Would she ask for a statement to be made on the Floor of the House?

Harriet Harman: Obviously, we need tough enforceable measures in criminal law and a proper regulatory framework to protect those in residential care. The number of people over 85 is set to double in the next two decades, so the issue is of growing importance. Last week we had a debate on carers, and Health questions will be taken next week. A number of hon. Members have raised the point; it was raised at Prime Minister's questions yesterday. We will look further for an opportunity to take the issue forward.

Harriet Harman: The setting up of a business Committee is to be considered by the Committee that we hope to establish, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). If the House is minded to move control of non-Government business from the Leader of the House to such a Committee, the question of enabling early-day motions with a certain number of signatures to be debated on the Floor of the House on a substantive motion will be very much a possibility. The Committee to be chaired by my hon. Friend could look into the idea and come up with proposals promptly.

David Burrowes: Tomorrow the House will further consider the commendable provisions in the Autism Bill, which deserve full support. However, can we have a debate about autism in the context of the criminal justice system? My constituent Gary McKinnon, the computer hacker, has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, yet the Home Secretary—or at least the previous Home Secretary—chose to disregard the impact of his condition and approved his extradition to the United States.

Alan Reid: The "Digital Britain" report caused great concern in the highlands in relation to radio, because it proposes that all national broadcast radio stations should move from analogue to DAB by 2015 and that all car radios are to be converted. However, the presence of DAB in the highlands and islands is almost non-existent. I hope that if the Government are switching from analogue to DAB they will ensure that everywhere in the country that can currently get the analogue radio signal will get DAB. Can we have an urgent debate so that those issues can be raised?

Edward Davey: Following the revelation in today's  Guardian that Tony Blair approved policy guidance to British intelligence officers on interviewing detainees overseas that probably led to Britain being in breach of our international obligations under the UN convention against torture, can we have a debate on how this House scrutinises such policy guidance? Could the Leader of the House ensure that such a debate is led by the Secretary of State for Justice—not least because he was Foreign Secretary at the time when that guidance was approved and, along with the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), must surely also have been responsible for approving such policy guidance for our intelligence services?

Hilary Benn: I agree wholeheartedly with what the hon. Gentleman said about the message that the projections give us. If there are those in society who somehow think that climate change is not happening and we do not need to worry, and that we can pull up the bed covers and hope it will all go away, they are profoundly mistaken. That is why I believe the publication of the projections today will have an impact, and a lot of people will have cause to think about what the future may hold if we do not change it.
	With respect, it is not true to say that the UK is not delivering on its own commitments. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we are one of the few countries that will not just meet its Kyoto commitments but do more than that. Frankly, when one looks around the world, one finds a lot of countries for which that is not the case.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned smart meters, and there is a plan to roll them out over 10 years. As he knows, we as a nation are investing a significant amount in renewable energy, and we are producing more electricity from offshore wind than any other country on the planet. The consultation on coal, for which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was responsible, set out proposals that will give us the toughest regime for any future coal-fired electricity generation of any country in the world.
	On the adaptation sub-committee, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that Sir John Krebs has been appointed to chair it, and I hope to make an announcement very soon about the other members. It is not the case that the programme is not going to start until 2011. A cross-Government programme is already under way, but the national risk assessment must be pulled together by that date.
	With respect, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman's assessment of the progress that we have made in implementing the recommendations in Sir Michael Pitt's report. What he said is not Sir Michael's view, and he is in a better position to make judgments than either the hon. Gentleman or I. We have made a lot of progress, and I shall shortly report to the House with a further update on what has happened since I last reported in December.
	The hon. Gentleman made an important point about new green spaces. He drew attention to the sites of special scientific interest that we currently have. They reflect what is special now, but a changing climate may alter that. One thing that will have to adapt over time is the system we have in place to safeguard what is special. We must recognise that climate change will have an impact on that.
	On the hon. Gentleman's final point, I want to be straight with the House and say that there is a balance to be struck. As he will know, this is cutting-edge science and an enormous amount of work has gone into producing the projections. Those involved should not apologise for one second for taking the time required to get them right. However, he is correct to say it is important that we get the information out. The 2002 projections were for then, and the new ones give us a much better assessment of the probability of the change. He knows, as does the whole House, that there is no absolute certainty, but I think we have struck the right balance. It will be for everyone who sees the projections to make their own judgment about the message that they send us, which is pretty clear, and the action that we need to take to adapt.

Hilary Benn: I agree with my hon. Friend about the need to decarbonise and to change the way we think about waste. Let us take a practical example: aluminium cans. Why would we want to chuck them away into landfill? We know that if you recycle them, we can get £550 a tonne for them. It takes about 90 per cent. less energy to produce another can, as opposed to making one out of virgin material. That is a practical example of why it makes sense to think about waste in a different way. If we are talking about the right policies, the landfill levy has been very effective in moving us from 8 per cent. of domestic household waste recycled 12 or so years ago to just over 36 per cent., which is what we have now reached, although we need to go a lot further.

Philip Hollobone: Given the Minister's remarks on helping people through the worst of the downturn, will he take this opportunity to congratulate Kettering borough council, of which I am member, on hosting not only what it called a "credit crunch summit" that brought many local agencies together to see how best to help local people, but a jobs fair, which was attended yesterday by 300 local people trying to find out more about the local employment opportunities available as well as by a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government? Are not such local initiatives really important in helping local people through the worst effects of the economic recession?

Tony Baldry: When the Government's business managers tabled today's debate, I do not suppose they expected it to take place immediately after a very public spat between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England. At last night's Mansion House dinner there was more back-stabbing than back-slapping. The Governor made clear that
	"fiscal policy... will have to change".
	Very wisely, Mervyn King pointed out that in five years the national debt would be more than double its current level of around 40 per cent. of GDP. He said, without any ambiguity,
	"it is also necessary to produce a clear plan to show how prospective deficits will be reduced during the next Parliament".
	The spat was all the more stark as a result of the Prime Minister's very strange performance yesterday at Question Time. He seemed to find it impossible to give a straight answer on budget deficits, an issue to which I shall return shortly.
	I am vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on China, and last week I attended a conference about Hong Kong which had been organised by the Hong Kong trade office here in London. The message—the same message that we hear from the excellent Chinese ambassador to London—is that China is moving out of recession. Similar signals are coming from India. Some confidence is beginning to return to the London stock exchange, although it is probably too early to assert that the worst economic storm since the 1930s is over.
	Professor Robert Shiller was in London a couple of weeks ago. It was Professor Shiller who predicted the end of the dotcom boom in March 2000. He was also one of the first to warn that the United States housing market was seriously over-valued, and that its collapse would have a huge impact on the world's largest economy. When he was in London, he warned that the recent stock market bounce should be treated with caution. He and others think that we could be in for a W-shaped recession, with recovery so fragile that we could be plunged into another slowdown as soon as we emerge from the present one.
	There are still a number of issues that threaten any long-term recovery for the British economy. Rising unemployment, mortgage defaults and a possible further wave of company failures could surprise us yet. Today's unemployment figures make grim reading. The ranks of the unemployed are now swollen to 2.26 million, the worst figure for 13 years. We seem to be losing jobs at a rate of 100,000 a month. There is every indication that unemployment will continue to rise, and will end up a great deal higher: an unemployment rate above 10 per cent. is almost certain. To put it more bluntly, unemployment may well reach more than 3 million.
	As a result of the recession, Jobcentre Plus is becoming bigger by the day. It now has 70,000 employees. It is already the Government's biggest agency, and it is seeking to employ an extra 10,000 staff. Even if the economy does start to turn up, the prospects for the jobless do not immediately look good. In my constituency, local unemployment is at a 13-year record high. The number of jobseeker's allowance claimants continues to increase, a number of major local employers have had to make redundancies, and the local unemployment rate has trebled since March 2008. Locally, as a community, we are determined that no one should be left behind in the recession. We have set up two job clubs, one in Banbury and one in Bicester, to give every possible support to those who have lost their jobs: to support them while they are out of work, and to help them back into the world of work as soon as possible.
	If the economy is starting to show some signs of sunshine, the clouds have yet to pass. As  The Economist noted last week,
	"another cloud already looms on the financial horizon: massive public debt."
	The simple truth is that our budget deficit is the highest in our peacetime history, and the highest in any G20 country. The reality is that we face a debt crisis. As I made clear in the debate on this year's Budget, the reality is that existing Government plans show that whoever wins the next general election, Government spending will have to be cut. The figures are all there in this year's Budget Red Book.
	The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the Government's plans imply a cash freeze on Government Departments for three years from 2011 after debt interest and other unavoidables. Allowing for inflation, that becomes a 2.3 per cent annual real-terms cut, or 7 per cent over three years. Both the Conservatives and the Government have said that they want to protect health spending; that is obviously appropriate as we have a fast-growing population. As a former chairman of the International Development Committee, I am glad that we have made it clear that we will honour the promise we made to increase the development budget to 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. Given the reality of the Government's Budget figures, and given the bills of rising unemployment and the huge interest costs of soaring national debt, many Departments will inevitably face budget cuts.
	I think that everyone is now pretty much agreed that we have reached the limits of our abilities to take on ever more debt without risking the economy as a whole.
	"We need"
	said  The Independent in a recent editorial
	"this acceptance of economic reality so that our political system can move on to the serious debate about where those public sector cuts should or should not fall. If there is to be a reshaping of the public realm, it must be enacted with serious thought."
	In short, the debate that we need to have for the foreseeable future is how we tackle the debt crisis and deliver quality public services when spending is tight. Ministers—in particular the Prime Minister—seem incapable of acknowledging that reality. Let me give one example.
	Even in the Department of Health things will be tough. Nobody is more respected on NHS research than the King's Fund, and in its briefing on the Budget it says that
	"from 2011 this period of growth will end. Treasury forecasts issued with the Budget suggest that the NHS is set to receive low or zero real growth in funding after 2011. The Institute for Fiscal Studies' forecasts suggest real term reductions from 2011 are a strong possibility...the poor state of the public finances means that the NHS must prepare at best for very low or zero growth in funding from 2011 onwards. The government's forecasts for annual real increases in total government spending on public services and benefits from 2011/12 were 0.7 per cent. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that once debt pressures and growth in spending such as unemployment benefits are taken into account, this 0.7 per cent. growth translates into an average real reduction of around 2.3 per cent. a year between 2011 and 2014 for the public sector as a whole...the scale of the challenge is magnified further by rising demand for health services with an ageing population and a higher incidence of chronic disease. Recent falls in NHS productivity are also a concern. Productivity must rise significantly if the NHS is to sustain and improve performance."
	David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, put it even more starkly last week when addressing senior NHS managers. He told them to plan for spending cuts even more drastic than those already suggested. He says that NHS trusts will have to deliver between £15 billion and £20 billion-worth of financial savings over the three years from 2011 to 2014. Such cuts will be the equivalent of up to 6 per cent. of the current NHS budget. That is of very real concern to my constituents and myself. The most serious constituency campaign that I have had to wage during my time as a Member of Parliament in North Oxfordshire is to keep the Horton hospital a general hospital, to maintain all key services at the Horton and to ensure that we continue to have 24/7 maternity and children's services.
	I put the King's Fund points to the then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), on 12 May. I asked:
	"The King's Fund advises that the poor state of the public finances means that the NHS must prepare, at best, for very low or zero growth in funding from 2011 onwards. I would like to know what the Secretary of State is doing to advise strategic health authorities that they must now start planning for zero or very low growth within the NHS from 2011 onwards".
	The answer from the right hon. Gentleman, who some say may be the next Prime Minister, was one of complete denial. He said:
	"What we have done since the allocations that took place last December—it was a two-year allocation of 5.5 per cent. each year and included the ability to draw down £800 million of surplus—is to say that there is a message here. It comes from the chief executive of the NHS as well, and it is that the NHS has to prepare for a time when we will not have such spectacular increases in growth...We cannot say at this stage what the expenditure will be in the NHS but we can say that it will continue to be our absolute priority. As the Prime Minister told the Royal College of Nursing yesterday, we hope very much to ensure that there are real-terms increases over the coming years, although they may not be at the same levels as in the past."—[ Official Report, 12 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 678.]
	One wonders what sort of planet the right hon. Gentleman is on. I cannot believe that the Secretary of State for Health had not at least read the research from the King's Fund. I am sure that the Secretary of State must have been talking to the chief executive of the NHS. It is depressing that when everyone is talking about more honesty from politicians, there seems to be collective denial from Ministers because at best this is waffle and, at worst and in reality, it is a collective denial by the Prime Minister and Ministers to face up to the facts.
	According to the Government's own figures, public spending in 2011 will see only a 0.7 per cent. increase. We have to start talking now in an adult and responsible way about how we can deliver more with less. We need some basic honesty, otherwise we know from experience what happens. We get a Treasury-led salami-slice approach to departmental budgets. Every Department regardless is told that they will simply have a smaller budget. We have been there before. All that happens is that it tends to harm front-line services as managers and mandarins push the pain away from them to those who are delivering services.
	There are a number of ways in which we can make some easy savings. We certainly do not need to waste billions of pounds on ID cards. We need a sensible and grown-up debate on defence. We need to ask, importantly, how our public services can be made more efficient. Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that productivity levels across the public sector have fallen over the past 10 years. A cause for concern is that average public sector output in 2007 was 3.2 per cent. lower than in 1998. We have had increases in public spending but falling productivity from the public sector.
	I have a simple plea. I suspect that, whoever wins the next general election, the next Parliament will be the hardest, toughest, most difficult and grimmest that any of us have lived through, but can we please have an honest and grown-up debate about how our public services do more with less, and can we please have an honest and grown-up debate about what the real figures are? Please can we cease this insane and mindless denial by the Prime Minister that what the Government have said in their Budget is the reality and the truth? If we can all acknowledge that, perhaps the public policy will be all the better for it. Otherwise all that will happen is that the country will waste a year between now and the general election. That is not in the country's interest and it is certainly not in the interests of our constituents.

David Anderson: I will speak on three areas: supporting the good work that is going on in the economy, stopping some failures in the economy, and suggesting something that should be positive for the banking system.
	In the north-east we have had good support over the last few years from the regional development agency—something I understand that the Tory party would do away with. If that is the case, and if the Tories were to get into power at any time in the future, that would be bad news for the north-east. The north-east, with One NorthEast working for it, has been successful in supporting manufacturing industry. We have set up the manufacturing advisory service, which has worked closely with north-east business. Some of the examples of successful interventions include support to a Tyneside brush manufacturer that reduced its energy bills by 35 per cent., and productivity improvements of almost £1 million at a Northumberland electronics company. A Teesside chemical company has saved £360,000 per annum by reducing equipment downtime following advice from the MAS. MAS North East Energy alone has assisted 240 companies, helping them to save £3.7 million in the past two years by giving them advice on how to eliminate waste, and guidance on energy costs. Overall, its work has helped to cut CO2 emissions by more than 25,000 tonnes in the last two years.
	We are developing a range of new industries in the north-east, and we need the support of the regional development agency to keep that going, by taking both the opportunities given by carbon capture and storage and the chance to have a large offshore wind system; that is there for the taking, if we are prepared to go for it. To help in that, One NorthEast has set up the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth in Northumberland, which has given support for those taking these measures forward. Ultra low carbon vehicles are also being developed; electric vehicles are being produced by Nissan. Companies in my constituency such as Tegrel and Romag in Consett are delivering charging canopies that will use photovoltaic cells so that cars can be charged in areas such as public car parks. That is a positive step for the future; this could be a huge development for this country, and it is being led and supported by One NorthEast.
	We are also leading the way in plastic electronics, industrial biotechnology, and health care. In particular, One NorthEast has given support to the Centre for Life in Newcastle; I am the chair of the all-party group on muscular dystrophy, and I have been involved in work on neuro-muscular diseases at the centre, which is leading the world on that. I hope that, regardless of what happens at the next election, the RDAs will carry on supporting businesses in the north-east and throughout the country.
	I now want to talk about a policy that has been a total failure for this country ever since it was first announced in the early 1990s: the private finance initiative. It has let this country down. I agree that we have delivered projects: we have built new schools and hospitals—but at what cost? According to a recent report, the cost at present is that we have had £64 billion-worth of PFI projects built, but we owe £217 billion-worth of repayments between now and 2033-34. Therefore, we will pay in almost four times the value of what we have got out: for every brick we have laid, we are paying for four; for every pound of value we have got, we have given £4, which does not sound like a good deal to me now. It did not sound like a good deal in 1992, and it certainly has not proved to be a good deal.
	We saw that with the failure of the public-private initiative for the tube: when Metronet went bust, it walked away. The whole point of PFI was supposed to be that the private sector would take the risk, but when the risk is called in, the private sector walks away. It left the people of London with a bill of £410 million for the failure of the private sector. The private sector was not prepared to stand up for this risk, and PFI certainly has not been value for money.
	I hope that my Government will take forward the development of the post bank, and that that will be supported across the House. Less than two years ago, if anyone in this House or anywhere else had suggested that we would have nationalised banks in this country, they would have been laughed out of court. The perceived wisdom was that if we nationalise a bank, money will flee away. The truth that has been shown over the past two years is that, rather than fleeing away, the people with money want to be involved in and supported by the nationalised banks.
	The basis for a post bank is therefore already in place, and I draw the Minister's attention to the report produced by the coalition for a post bank. That coalition has brought together the Federation of Small Businesses, the Communication Workers Union and the Unite trade union, the New Economics Foundation and the Public Interest Research Centre. They believe that a post bank could be built on the post office network and that it could incorporate the following principles. It would safeguard the unique and popular post office network, which is something that we should all be committed to. It would be a key player in addressing financial exclusion. It would build in a universal banking obligation. It would also give real support to small and medium-sized enterprises.
	The idea of a post bank is not new. Such banks exist all over Europe. In France, La Poste set up such a bank in January 2006. Since then it has built up 11 million accounts, and accounts for one quarter of La Poste's turnover. In Italy, BancoPosta was set up in 2000; for the first time in half a century, the Italian post office came into profit in 2002 as a direct result. In Germany, although there have been problems with Deutsche Post, its bank has 14.5 million customers, making it the largest retail bank in the country. There is, therefore, a model that we can take up and adapt.
	The conclusion of the report that I mentioned is clear. It states:
	"There is both a need and an appetite for transformative change in our economic and banking institutions. A Post Bank based on the Post Office network will provide a solid, trusted basis for new banking, new investment and the revival of local economies.
	The Post Bank must be dramatically different from the failed commercial banking model. It must signify a departure from profit-driven, speculative banking practice and a return to locally based, sound financing. It must be inclusive, reaching out to other social and financial organisations concerned with the economic health of their communities. It must be a banking system for all the people.
	A successful Post Bank would offer real, long-term financial security to individuals and businesses and provide a vital role for the Post Office commensurate with the high esteem in which it continues to be held by the British people."
	Those are sound reasons for doing this now, and I suggest to the Minister that we should turn our hand to it. It would be a start towards that if the Government were to consider withdrawing or amending the Postal Services Bill. They should work with the unions and others who have put forward alternative plans and develop the Post Office into the modern 21st century organisation that it should be, and Royal Mail along with it.
	There are issues to do with the pensions of the workers at the Post Office and Royal Mail, but there are precedents here. In 1994, when the mines were privatised, the Department of Trade and Industry took on the role of the former National Coal Board. I accept that that was a different situation and the mineworkers pension scheme was in surplus, but what was different then was that nobody contributed to the mineworkers pension scheme going forward. In the current situation, we could develop the Royal Mail pension scheme with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, or whatever we are calling the business Department this week—playing its part as the employer. This is worth looking at. If we are serious, we should sit down with the unions and do it, and at the same time develop the post bank.

Tony Baldry: Is it not particularly tragic that the only Labour Back-Bench Member present has made a speech critical of Labour Front-Bench policies? It is pretty pathetic that the Government Whips cannot get at least one Member from their party to give a speech in support of the Government's economic policy.

Tobias Ellwood: My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is perhaps because the Government cannot get support on their own Benches that this debate has been tabled for the fag-end of the parliamentary week when many Members have dispersed to their constituencies. This debate should be held in prime parliamentary time and be given a full day's hearing, so that all Members can represent their constituencies and voice their concerns. Instead the Chamber is almost empty; we could, in fact, hold this discussion in a taxi cab. That is an embarrassment, and I am dismayed that so few Members are present. That does not take away from the quality of the speeches made, however, which I am sure will make up for the lack of numbers.
	We are living in extraordinary times. We have just had some astonishing local election results, which left this dilapidated Labour party representing not one single county. We had EU elections in which the governing party scored only 15 per cent.—a score Labour last saw under Michael Foot. We have also witnessed 11 Ministers resign from the Government, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) teased out in the recent debate on Europe, even the Foreign Secretary considered resigning. I do not know why he felt the need to tell everyone he had considered resigning, and I am not sure how helpful that was to the Prime Minister; the Foreign Secretary must answer that for himself.
	We should bear in mind the fact that the backdrop to all this is one of the worst economic downturns we have ever seen, and it is understandable why the nation is losing its patience with the Government. There is an increasing need for a general election to be called, rather than having a Government limping on towards the final date—the endgame—next May.
	It is sad that we cannot muster many Members to come here to debate properly issues such as the obscene sums that the Government are throwing in such a reckless way at the economy. Their approach will encumber every newborn child with a debt to the tune of £22,500. The reason why the Government are able to cling on, and why the Prime Minister has not been ousted, is because his weakness is overshadowed only by the weakness of those who tried to oust him. Again and again we hear the call, which I am sure the Minister will repeat, that this is a global economic downturn, so many of the problems are not vested in Britain. It is a global economic downturn, but each country is having to manage the effects in different ways, and the cause of that is the rules and regulations that are or are not in place in each country.
	What happened when this Government came to power? They made the Bank of England independent, and straight away the Bank lost crucial powers to regulate the banks. That was the first schoolboy error made by this Government, and it led to the level of borrowing getting out of control; banks were lending people sums that they could not afford, in ways that they did not understand. We hear again and again from the Prime Minister that the situation in the United States is to blame for the downturn in our economy. Perhaps some aspects of the situation there can be blamed—what happened to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the sub-prime market—but it was not the Americans who were allowing Bradford & Bingley to offer 125 per cent. mortgages. That was very much a British issue, which happened under the tutelage of this Government. It went unrectified, and that is why we have the current levels of debt.
	The Government then say that they have the answers and that other countries are copying them. Perhaps the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who speaks for the Lib Dems, will wish to expand on that. The coupon rate at which we lent to our banks was about 12 per cent. How can the Government, the lender of last resort, possibly expect to lend money to banks in that way and then expect those banks to pass the lending on to small and medium-sized businesses at the going rate of about 1 or 2 per cent? Banks will not do that, which is why small and medium-sized businesses up and down the country are suffering because they cannot get the loans they need to see them through this very difficult period.
	Another Government initiative was to reduce VAT to 15 per cent. at a time when businesses up and down the country were slicing the cost of their products—the discounts were already 10 or 15 per cent. How was 2.5 per cent. off VAT going to help? That was a gimmick, but it is not over yet, because VAT will go back up to 17.5 per cent. Guess on which day that is due to happen? VAT will go back up when Big Ben chimes midnight on 31 December. The industry that I represent as a Front Bencher—the tourism industry—is up in arms, because that is one of its busiest days. Businesses will have to run two tills that evening; they will run one up to midnight and another from midnight onwards.

Tobias Ellwood: The Minister is shaking his head. Well, some concessions have been made and those businesses have been given a couple of hours to adjust, but why on earth was that date chosen in the first place? That decision was madness, and shows that the Government were not in touch with the very people they were trying to help.
	My next concern is the top rate of income tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the increase will gain "approximately nothing" in revenue. The increase was a gimmick designed to appease Labour Back Benchers—those very Members who are absent today. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) discuss the increasing growth of Jobcentre Plus; it seems that the only place where people can get a job now is working for Jobcentre Plus, because it has grown to be one of the biggest employers for the Government. Unemployment is growing—it is currently 2.3 million and the CBI expects the number of unemployed to grow to up to 3 million. That is happening simply because we did not make arrangements to contain the scale of the economic downturn in time.
	In the remaining minutes available to me, I wish to discuss tourism, the portfolio that I follow. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke), whose constituency includes the wonderful little village of Aldbury, where I used to live, is on the Front Bench to listen to this, because it is important that all Members, on both sides of the House, understand the relevance and importance of tourism. That is glossed over in this House on a regular basis. Tourism is our fifth biggest industry: it is worth £90 billion, 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses make up our magnificent tourism industry, and one in four new jobs is created by tourism. Yet it could be argued that tourism does well in this country in spite of the Government, not because of them. It is faring better than expected in this downturn; ironically, because people do not have money in their pockets thanks to this Government, they are forced to consider a domestic holiday, rather than go abroad. That is not an excuse for the Government to say that they are pleased with the tourism figures, because that is not how the tourism industry would have liked its figures to grow.
	What this Government have done over a 10-year period is allow the infrastructure designed to support the tourism industry to get out of control. The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) spoke passionately about the importance of the regional development agencies, but they have creased a confusing, overlapping and costly system that has wrecked our tourism industry. One or two RDAs have done well to promote tourism—the north-west's RDA is one example, but that is because it does not hold on to that money centrally. Nobody has heard of the north-west's RDA or the north-east's RDA, but they have heard of Blackpool and Newcastle. Those are the brand names that need to be promoted, rather than the RDA names, which have taken all the money.

Tobias Ellwood: I hope that tourism is growing by more in the north-east than anywhere else, because it gets seven times the amount of money that the south-west does, even though its tourism industry is seven times smaller; the irony there is that the money has not gone to where the tourism industries should actually be. The problem is not only in the distribution of funds, but in an overlapping of effort. It cannot be right that in Singapore there are five different offices representing and promoting tourism in different parts of the United Kingdom. That has come about simply because there is not one voice looking after English tourism, and we need to get back to that. The Conservative policy is to ensure that in this economic downturn we spend the money apportioned to tourism better, which means having a stronger voice for Visit England and a less powerful voice for the RDAs, but a stronger voice for the brand names of the areas that we actually know and love.
	We should not forget that this country is the sixth most visited place in the world, which is amazing given that the whole of the UK could be fitted into one of the great lakes in Canada. Yet, as I have said, the Government do not recognise the potential for growing this particular business. That is reflected in what is called the "tourism deficit": in 1997, the amount of money that Britons spent abroad taken away from the amount of money that overseas visitors spent in the UK gave a figure of minus £4 billion. We were spending far more money abroad than we are able to bring in, and that figure has jumped to minus £18 billion. That is how much we are losing, whereas countries such as France or Spain have a surplus, and are making money because they are able to attract people in. That is not just to do with the weather; it is to do with other aspects too.
	Let us consider the UK's proportion of global tourism. In 1997 we had 6.9 per cent. of the international market, but the figure has dropped to 3.3 per cent. Those figures must be reversed if we are to get a grip on our tourism industry and what we can offer. We should celebrate our offering, because this country has things that cannot be replicated in new tourism industries in other places. Dubai and Thailand are great places to visit, but Oxford is Oxford and Brighton is Brighton. The culture offered in Britain is unique, but we need to sell it too. Another irony is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is one of the few Departments that could make money for the Exchequer were the Exchequer to invest in it; for every £1 spent abroad, we bring £25 back. Does the Exchequer recognise this? I do not think so, because it has cut Visit Britain's budget by 20 per cent. over the next three years.
	We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the Olympic games coming here. It will be a fantastic chance to celebrate what is good in Britain, beamed to television sets with billions of watchers around the world. Not a single penny has been made available to harness that opportunity, and that is a scandal.
	The Treasury has removed tax relief on second home lets. What conversations did the Minister have with the DCMS about that? It will affect the tourism industry, because fewer people will be able to afford to let out their homes for tourism purposes.
	We have also seen a legal battle over VAT levels on bingo. Hon. Members who are familiar with the bingo scene will recognise that the industry has been hit by two taxes—VAT and gross profits tax. Gala Coral took the Government to court and won its case that the VAT imposition was unfair, because it was being hit twice. The Government have responded by getting rid of the VAT but increasing the gross profits tax from 15 per cent. to 22 per cent. Did the Treasury consult the DCMS on that? According to answers to parliamentary questions that I have received, no consultation took place. The consequences are not just monetary. Yes, the Exchequer will lose out because bingo halls will close, but bingo is part of our community. For many of the dear old ladies who play bingo, it is their one evening out in the week. It is as much a part of the community as the post office or the pub, and the Government seem unaware of the impact that this taxation will have on the community.
	I mentioned pubs, and we have also seen an increase in alcohol duties, part of a grand sweep of hikes in taxation with no recognition of the impact on the normal responsible drinker. Instead of targeting certain types of alcohol, the Government have put a burden on all pubs, and that is why some 40 pubs shut every week. That is changing the fabric of our communities, especially rural communities, where pubs can be one of the main tourist attractions.
	I urge the Minister to think beyond the numbers, the bean counters and the abacuses over which they toil, and recognise the wonders and the importance of our tourism industry. All these tweaks in VAT and taxation have a knock-on impact on things that are very important to us and have been around for such a long time, and it is destroying some of them. I am passionate about tourism. I hope that I have expressed that today, and I hope that that has come across to the Minister.

Ian Pearson: With the leave of the House, I shall briefly respond to the debate, although I appreciate that it is not customary for a Minister to do so in a topical debate.
	We heard interesting contributions from the hon. Members for Banbury (Tony Baldry), and for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), and from my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), as well as contributions from Front Benchers, as is usual. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon talked principally about three issues: regional development agencies, the private finance initiative and the post bank. On the latter, I know that he has been in discussions with what used to be the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and is now the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I would not want to say any more on that matter.
	My hon. Friend made some good points about regional development agencies. I am not sure what the Conservative policy on RDAs is, but I think that it would be a huge strategic blunder to get rid of RDAs. They have been on a learning curve and, overall, they now provide effective assistance to businesses in their regions and contribute to their regional economies. He referred to One NorthEast and some of the success stories of the manufacturing advisory service. I can confirm that those success stories are not confined to the north-east, but can be found across the regions of England. He also talked impressively about the action that companies in the north-east are taking on renewable energy, plastic electronics, industrial biotechnology and electric vehicles. Those are all important areas for the UK economy for the future.
	I have to say that I do not agree with my hon. Friend that the private finance initiative has let the country down. Under the private finance, many more schools and hospitals have been built than could possibly have been built using conventional financial routes. Independent investigation shows that there is good evidence suggesting that PFI projects are far more likely to be built on time and on budget than those built using conventional procurement, although the Government have made great strides to improve their record on conventional procurement.
	My hon. Friend also referred to the fact that payments are made over a period of years, because the costs of running a facility are often a large part of the total whole-life costs, which are taken into consideration when we talk about the private finance initiative. If he looks back at the bad old days of conventional procurement under the Conservatives, he will see that often, the attitude was, "design, build and fail to maintain." There was a scandalous record of failing to maintain the fabric of our infrastructure, and private finance has addressed that issue.

Ian Pearson: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will not give way to him. I want briefly to respond to the debate; as I say, it is not normal to do so. I want to come on to the points that he raised, and those made by the hon. Member for Banbury.
	The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, spoke with great passion about tourism. I acknowledge the importance of tourism to the UK economy. I do not particularly want to get into the issues of pubs and bingo today, as they are perhaps not central to preparing Britain's economy for the future, but he is certainly correct to point to the fact that tourism is a significant part of the UK economy. It is an important part of Britain's economic future, too.
	The hon. Gentleman referred—I think I quote him correctly—to the Government throwing "obscene sums" at the economy. I have to disagree. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) talked about us throwing the kitchen sink at the economy. It is quite good that we did so. We needed to take action to stabilise the banking system. It is right, in the Government's opinion, that there should be a fiscal stimulus to support the UK economy. Frankly, it would be irresponsible for a Government not to have thrown the kitchen sink at the problem.
	As the hon. Member for Banbury suggests, however, we know that public spending cannot grow in the way that it has since 1997. I am enormously proud of the public investment made since 1997; we have largely rebuilt Britain's infrastructure. The hospital system and general practitioner practices across the country are in a far better state than they were when we came to power. Schools have been rebuilt. Each and every Member can point to new schools in their constituency that were built in the past 10 or 12 years, sometimes with private finance and sometimes through conventional public procurement. That is clear, important investment in the fabric of the country for the future.
	With regard to spending figures—a point raised by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke)—we can trade different sets of figures, but he will be aware that public sector current expenditure is planned to rise by 6.8 per cent. this year, and by 4.4 per cent. in 2010-11. We believe that it is important to invest during these difficult economic times, but we have also said that we need to take a responsible attitude to the public finances in the medium term. That is why, in the Budget, we published figures showing a real-terms increase in public-sector current expenditure of 0.7 per cent. per year from 2011 onwards. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that we should take into account debt interest charges and welfare bills. I do not know what welfare bills or public debt charges will be between 2011 and 2014. We live in a time of great uncertainty. Given that uncertainty in the world economy, it is too early to say how those factors will pan out, and so much too early to say how the growth in public spending will be shared, especially as we are only one year into the current comprehensive spending review.

Roger Williams: The Secretary of State has been generous in giving way. The falling stock system was introduced because of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy prion. We now know that there is no BSE in sheep and that the existence of prions in the cattle population is greatly reduced. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that it is now time to examine the whole falling stock system and ascertain whether the regulation is too burdensome and disproportionate?

Ian Cawsey: I endorse that comment entirely. DEFRA is always chanting the mantra to farmers that diversification is the way ahead and they must move with the times and look for new ideas, but they cannot cross the River Jordan instantly, and I think there should always be support for farmers who are trying to do the best for their companies and trying to keep farming going in their communities. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister might be able to respond to that later.
	The dairy farmers in the Isle of Axholme are annoyed that they have so far been unsuccessful in their attempts to get placed with other contracts. The Isle of Axholme is quite remote, and there are only three dairy farms there, none of which is a large concerns, so the problems are clear—except that the tanker that currently comes to collect their milk every day is collecting on behalf of the other companies, and there is therefore a slight frustration that it is the tanker of the same companies that will not take their milk that is coming to their farms. That seems absurd. Also, Dairy Crest has contracts placed in Gainsborough and Retford, neither of which is very much further away. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister might speak to the receiver about this. I understand that attempts are being made to try to get contracts for the farmers who are left, but might these companies, who are picking up milk now and who have already placed new contracts for farmers who are not far away, be encouraged to go that bit further? I hope that that might be achieved even if it is only for a period of time so that, as the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) said, people can consider their options. That would be better than the situation they are in now—one in which they face a very bleak future and could be forced out of the industry very quickly. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to this point in his reply. For these 200 farmers, including the three in my constituency on the Isle of Axholme, it is no consolation that so much progress has been made for everybody else. They face a very bleak future, and DEFRA should do something to help them.
	Of course, like most representatives of a rural area, I have meetings with my local farming representatives. I had a good meeting at West Butterwick recently with the local members of the National Farmers Union, at which I was heartened to learn that many of them are doing quite well at the moment—much of my area is arable—despite all the problems facing other farming sectors and the British economy generally. A lot of that has to do with exchange rates, subsidy and so on, and before we get too carried away it should be borne in mind that those farmers have been through a pretty rough time too, so if they are having a window of opportunity now, where things are a bit better, I say "More power to their elbow."
	"Farming" is not a generic term. One sector may be doing well while others are struggling—and not just dairy farmers; the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) mentioned pig farmers and I cannot help but agree with everything that he said. That is an unsubsidised part of farming that does a really good job producing an excellent product and it genuinely does have much better animal welfare standards than are found in other countries across the world—I say that as someone who has a passionate interest in animal welfare—yet the magic premium that we all seek for it never seems to come through, certainly not at the level it should. We must support the sector because if, as I do, hon. Members believe animal welfare is not an add-on for people involved in agriculture but should be an integral part of what they do, we should back British people who take that view and deliver it. There are a number of ways to back them.
	We know that pig farming is an unsubsidised industry, but we can change things through procurement. It is a disgrace that the pork procurement rates of national and local government are as low as they are. I am sick to the back teeth of having this discussion with people who say, "We have to put things out to tender and we must have the same specification and so on." I see no reason, and never have done, why an animal welfare standard should not be part of the specification. Let other people meet it and compete on it, but for goodness' sake let us not ignore it. We must ensure that it is part of everything we do. I am certain that if the Minister could get Departments to add that to their procurement specifications, it would make a real difference and British pig farmers would rightly be the beneficiaries.
	This debate on food, farming and the environment is wide-ranging, and I welcome that because about six months ago—I am not claiming any glory for the fact that we are having this debate—I asked at business questions whether we could have such a debate. I did not quite use the phrase "food, farming and the environment"; I think I was more interested in having a debate on land use. However, what I was asking for could almost be fitted into that title, because we are in a quandary over land use in rural areas, and the Government, across all Departments, have to start thinking through what their response is going to be. I am sure that my area is not that different from everywhere else and, as I have mentioned before, people have concerns about food security, so they want to ensure that we keep good agricultural land, we keep Britain's farmers farming and we keep a high level of ability to feed ourselves.
	Alongside that, there are pressures from people who want more rural housing—in particular, affordable rural housing. I have seen the effect of that housing need in my constituency. I feel helplessness, as much as anything else, when, as happens time and again at my surgeries in one of the villages, I meet a young couple or their parents who want to be able to say that they have lived as a family for generations in the same village, but they cannot afford to pay the current house prices—these are very nice places to live and the market is king—and there is hardly any social housing for them to move into. I have no problem with the policy, but when it was decided that council houses could be sold off under the right to buy, it was inevitable that tenants in very nice rural parts of the country who could get a big discount on their houses did so—they would be fools not to. Nothing came after those houses and, as a result, there is a real shortage now and we need to do more about that.
	We need to encourage local authorities to invest more in the social housing in their rural areas and we need to have a sensible—I plead for no more than common sense—approach to sustainability. There was a planning application in my constituency—it was in the East Riding of Yorkshire—a few months ago by somebody who wanted to build a new house for a family who had lived in the village for years. There had been a house on the site previously, but it had been demolished and they had been living in a mobile home, admittedly for some years. They simply wanted to replace that mobile home with a house again, but the application was turned down because it was an "unsustainable development". It was simply the same people wanting to live in the same village. While we are making decisions like that, we are getting into a quandary about our use of rural land, and that needs to be addressed.
	Flood defence is another key issue. My constituency is split by several rivers—the Trent, the Humber and the Ouse—and the Environment Agency is trying to draw up flood defence risk strategies and plans for the future. That is difficult for everybody, because people are concerned about the extent to which they will be defended in the future. It is clear that the Environment Agency's thinking, given the pressures that it is under—and the fact that climate change is making such planning difficult for the next 50 to 100 years and beyond—increasingly includes the use of wash land. My hon. Friend the Minister will recall the DEFRA document "Making Space for Water", and it is driving much of the consideration.
	We have three competing pressures for land—the need for more rural affordable housing, the aim of food security in the future and the need to ensure that rural areas remain dry. The Government need to think carefully about a land use policy for the future. The farmers in my community accept that they are potentially part of the solution to flooding, but they do not want to lose good agricultural land. If it is to be used only occasionally during extreme weather conditions, they want reassurances that they will receive adequate compensation for anything that they lose, such as crops on flooded land.
	I plead for common sense. The Government need to ensure that the different Departments and agencies that are considering how land should be used talk to each other and come to sensible conclusions. It may sound as though my whole speech is about the Isle of Axholme, but that area has had terrible problems. It is reclaimed land below sea level, and is no longer an island—although it used to be. For those hon. Members of a Methodist bent—as I am—it is where John Wesley was born. It was reclaimed by Vermuyden, who was brought over from Holland to drain it. Drainage in the area is already complex, but as pressures grow—on surface water drainage because of increased building, and from the Trent, which flows through the Isle—there are real fears about protecting the area for the future.
	The Environment Agency started its review of the Trent strategy, which includes the Isle, by saying that it probably did not need to be as well defended in the future as it has been in the past. That is not a great message to send to people who live on land that is below sea level. It took an enormous effort, but in the end we managed to get all the agencies together and the Environment Agency is now spending £1 million on a specific Axholme strategy to try to work out who will do what in the future.
	The problem is that the agency was looking only at what it did, and was not talking to the internal drainage boards—the people with the real local knowledge of the area. They know where every drain goes, which pump is on its way out and which pump will last for a bit longer. We have solved the problem now, and everyone is sitting around the same table—I have the great honour of chairing our flood strategy—but that was not the direction that the agency was taking in the beginning, and I am worried that it is working in isolation in other areas.
	The other problem with the agency is that all the river defence strategies cover particular rivers and particular areas, stopping at county boundaries, but water does not stop at the boundaries. For my area, there are several different strategies affecting the East Riding of Yorkshire, west Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, but—as I have told my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State before—there is not enough co-ordination by the different teams in the Environment Agency that are working on those strategies. I am sure that they are doing a good job on each individual strategy, but where they meet is crucial.
	The East Riding of Yorkshire council shares my concerns and has been in very difficult correspondence with me. In fact, I think it is still subject to a judicial review of the way in which the Environment Agency has done its work. We want to avoid that. We do not want to get into litigation about it; we want to get people to sit round a table, sorting it out. The Secretary of State has told me before that he is reinforcing that message to the Environment Agency and that that is what will happen in the future. I can only wish him more power to his elbow and I look forward to seeing the results.
	May I finish on one other point that I think is important? It is certainly important in my area. It is the whole issue of composting and landfill. Composting is growing, and I represent several farmers who have moved into it as a way of diversifying. We need to ensure that there are good standards throughout. The example that I am going to give involves a farmer but the local council.
	North Lincolnshire council is now doing all sorts of things about collecting garden waste, and its recycling rates have increased enormously as a result. The council is using open air windrow composting, however, which is causing concerns. There are two reasons. One is obvious: it is not nice for people near it, because it smells. I do not care how many times I have sat around a table with all sorts of experts—I willingly admit that I am not an expert—who tell me all the things they do to take the smell away and that it does not have to be a smelly process. That is bunkum; it smells. Sometimes it smells worse than others, but it always smells. In some respects, that is almost the least of our worries.
	The other reason is the health risks posed by spores that spread from the site. The risks are well known, but the controversial point is the extent to which they spread in a concentration that could genuinely pose a health risk to an area. In the United Kingdom, we have gone for a minimum distance that is quite far compared with that in many other European countries. Germany, for example, is coming to the view that it should be only half the distance that we allow.
	I went with a delegation of hon. Members to see the Secretary of State about the matter—we all have the sites in our constituencies—and I understand that the Department has commissioned research, which is being peer-reviewed. I accept that it is a job in hand, but all I would say is that while that job is in hand people are living near the sites. They know that there is a health concern and they know that the sites smell. They want to be reassured and they want the Government to move quickly. The compost should be covered, because that would help with the spores and with the smell. We all know why it is not done that way: it is cheaper not to. It is cheaper to do it the way it is being done, but finance is not everything. The environment that people live in is important.
	I have several landfill sites in my constituency, and one of the great ironies is that every one who has a landfill site in their constituency wants it to be filled as quickly as possible, capped as quickly as possible and finished with as quickly as possible, but as councils increasingly hit their recycling targets, less and less goes to landfill. The date until which the sites might still be around moves further away. In terms of the greater good, that is not a bad thing, but we must be tighter and tighter on the operators, because they are going to be there for longer and longer.
	In Roxby in my constituency, where Biffa runs a landfill site, there have been horrendous problems with smell over the past year, so much so that the company is undergoing a prosecution from the Environment Agency. Biffa is a very experienced company in this regard, but—although this is not true now because of the action that the Environment Agency took—on visits to the site, we found it uncovered and there was no apparatus to extract the gas. From the company's point of view that was plain daft, because on other parts of the site it was extracting the gas, generating electricity and making some money. On the part of the site I am talking about, the company was just letting us smell it and it was not very good.
	Perhaps I should declare an interest. I live in Winterton, next to Roxby, and Mrs. Cawsey would want me to say that it is pretty bad where we live, too. That is not the key reason why the situation needs to be sorted out, however. It needs to be sorted because, thanks to recycling, such sites will be around for a lot longer than we thought. People who live near them need to know that they are safe, and that the smell can be taken care of.
	I welcome today's debate. There is so much going on in rural areas at the moment, and people are looking for the Government to plot a way through it. People know that flood defences and housing have to be dealt with. Food security is rattling up the agenda at a rate of knots in a way that it was not only a year or two ago. We are looking for a comprehensive, cohesive way forward from the Government. I hope that when the Minister replies, he will be able to give some reassurance on that.

David Heath: First, I ought to apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who cannot be here for family reasons; he would, of course, otherwise have contributed to the debate.
	We often talk about Government's primary duty being to defend the people, but there is a second primary duty, which is to feed the people—to ensure continuity of food supply. There has been a feeling in recent years that perhaps the Government have forgotten the key priority of ensuring a prosperous farming and processing industry that enables us to maintain continuity of supply.
	There is a widespread feeling that agriculture has somehow been airbrushed out of the political system altogether. It does not appear in the name of a Department, and it does not feature in our regular Question Times to anything like the extent that it did. It has been almost impossible to get a debate on the issue. That is why I welcome today's debate so greatly. I have called for such a debate year after year, in various contexts and wearing different hats. At least we have perhaps again established the principle that we should have regular debates on agriculture.
	I invite Ministers to engage far more with the agricultural community than they have in the past few years. Of course, they attend the Oxford farming conference, but I would like to see a Secretary of State at the Royal Bath and West of England Society agricultural show. One always used to, but in the past few years, we have not seen a Minister attend the Royal Bath and West, or the annual dairy industry dinner in my constituency. I think that the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) snuck into my constituency and visited the Royal Bath and West; I am always happy to see him.  [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) visited, too. If they had only written to me to tell me that they were coming to my constituency, I would know these things, but they are very welcome. I always attend the show, and I always take a great deal away from it, in terms of making contact with my constituents.

David Heath: He did, and he was the only one who wrote to tell me so. Perhaps he has a better support system.
	This country is amazingly blessed in its agricultural land. Despite the depredations in the dairy industry and the varroa mite, this is literally a land of milk and honey. This country has huge potential for agricultural production, yet there has been a decline. It cannot be a sensible way of managing our affairs to encourage imports of agricultural produce and for there to be reductions in our industries. There is not only an economic but a moral imperative to reverse that trend, particularly given what we all know is coming—climate change and the need to feed an ever-increasing population across the world. We should be making best use of our natural advantages.
	The decline in what we consume of our produce is quite noticeable. During the lifetime of this Government alone, 10 per cent. less of the meat that is put on tables in British households comes from home-produced sources. That is a marked decline. Only 50 to 55 per cent. of the vegetables eaten in this country now come from British sources, with the rest being imported. That is partly due to purchasers—not just consumers at the point of sale, but the supermarkets and retailers—and partly because of deep-rooted ignorance among a large part of our population who find no connection between the produce that comes from rural parts of Britain and what they actually eat, and who see things as coming in packets, rather than from fields. A farmer in my constituency was taken aback when a teacher—not a schoolchild—asked him whether it was necessary to kill a cow to get its milk. Such ignorance and lack of connection between urban and rural Britain is astonishing. It is imperative that that approach is changed.
	The Secretary of State talked about employment. If nothing else, there is a need to recognise the number of people who are still employed in the sector. Even though fewer people are now directly employed on the land as primary producers, we should recognise that a large sector of our economic production and national employment is engaged in the whole business of food and produce.
	Let me deal with some of the problems. Dairying is the big issue for many of my constituents in my part of the world of Somerset. I still say—in the absence of any Cheshire Members in the Chamber I can do so without a great deal of argument—that Somerset has the finest dairy land in the country, as is recognised. However, let us consider what has happened to dairy farming. There are now 13,600 dairy farmers in this country—the actual figure that I have is 13,601, but we are losing two dairy farmers a day and I do not know which day of the week that number was printed on. There were 14,296 in 2007 and 28,119 in 1997, so half the dairy farmers in this country have gone out of production in just 10 years, which is extremely worrying.
	It is not just the farmers who have disappeared, of course, but the beasts in the herds and flocks. There are now 300,000 fewer cattle, 200,000 fewer pigs and 100,000 fewer sheep in the national herds and flocks than there were in 2006. Our capacity to produce food is shrinking, especially in the livestock sector. There are several reasons for that, and the one I always highlight is milk price. Until we have a sustainable price that allows our producers to get a return on their investment in milk, the dairy industry will continue to shrink. I return, as I have done many times in recent years, to the principle that we must do something about the horribly skewed chain in milk production between the primary producer and the supermarket. The huge economic strength of the oligopoly of retailers means that although we get a slight alleviation on milk price every now and again, the problem constantly returns when times become a little more difficult. That has an effect on not only dairy farmers, but processors, albeit to a lesser extent. Processors are often lumped in as part of the problem, but any who talks to cheese makers knows that the retailers squeeze them every bit as hard as the milk producers, which puts them at a disadvantage. We will not do that by relying on a market whose structure is fundamentally skewed; it is absolutely clear, as has been shown many times, that, to rectify the anomalies in the market, we need a statutory code of conduct that is enforceable and backed by an ombudsman. The sooner we get that in place, the better, and the sooner the dairy industry will experience more stability.
	Several Members have touched on the difficulties of Dairy Farmers of Britain, the co-operative that is now in receivership. The situation sends to dairy farmers throughout the country a terrible message—that, even when they think that they have a stable market for their milk and a co-operative arrangement that they hope is going to prosper, it can suddenly fall down. Although I hear what is said about the recovery arrangements that are being put in place, as far as I am aware, even those producers who have found new contracts have not received a milk cheque for May—effectively up until 3 June. For the average producer, that means £10,000 to £15,000 of lost income, and possibly more, as the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said. The average bank manager is not just going to ignore that, so we need to ensure that producers are able to see themselves through the next few difficult months until they have a stable income stream again—without some computer somewhere telling them that they can no longer cash their cheques because the bank says no.

David Heath: There is a double loss, but I do not deplore the practice entirely, because a good co-operative includes a degree of member involvement in the business. None the less, it just shows how fragile the whole set-up is. Indeed, to return to my point, until we can be sure that liquid milk prices are sufficiently high to ensure producer and co-operative profitability, we will experience such fragility in the market.
	We have already mentioned nitrate vulnerable zones, and I accept entirely what the Secretary of State said: the problem was not of his making and what was signed up to in Brussels predated this entire Administration. But, what was signed up to in Brussels was daft and needed unpicking, and some of us have argued strenuously over the past couple of years for proper derogations to ensure that we do not put our producers in considerable difficulty, given not only the capital investment that they will have to make, but the agricultural activities into which they will be forced. Those activities are not sensible in terms of proper land management and slurry spreading, given the latter's confinement to limited periods. They do not make sense for the land, for good husbandry or for the people who live around those farms and who, for a couple of days a year, will be subject to misery as a result. We should strenuously argue that case, and, until we have the right response from the European Union, the directive should be quietly put in a box somewhere, because it is too difficult to implement.
	Bovine tuberculosis is a national scandal. In 2008, 41,718 cattle were slaughtered—a huge increase. One can almost see the front line, and the little arrows with bovine tuberculosis on them, spreading up and across the country from the south-west, like the introduction to "Dad's Army". But we are not prepared to do what is necessary to arrest the advance. It is no good saying that the principal vector is cattle-to-cattle transfer. We know that; everybody does. However, I know of all too many closed farms in my constituency that have had no cattle movements but where tuberculosis comes out of nowhere. But it does not come out of nowhere, of course; we know that it comes from the feral population. Yet we are not prepared to deal with that endemic badger disease, although it has to be addressed for welfare reasons. The situation cannot go on. Even if we did not believe that acting for welfare reasons was necessary, the situation is a nonsense in economic terms as the cost to the taxpayer is enormous.
	Furthermore, when a farmer sees his or her herd slaughtered, the effect is catastrophic and appalling. That is especially true if the herd is of pedigree or organic stock and irreplaceable, or if it is destroyed on the basis of a gamma interferon test and the Department refuses to carry out a corroboratory test to see whether there is an infection. In such cases, the Department acts on the basis of a test for tuberculosis that has already been shown to be far from conclusive. We have to grasp that issue. I know that it is politically difficult and why the Government do not want to act, but that is not an excuse. The time has come, I am afraid, to do something about it.
	We have mentioned the electronic identification of sheep. Again, I hear what the Secretary of State is saying; he is attempting to delay the introduction of the measure and trying to argue for a derogation. However, that is another nonsense, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) pointed out. The rationale behind the directive—if ever there was one—has already gone, and in practical and economic terms it is a nonsense. Why are we proceeding? Sometimes we just have to say to the European Commission that some directives are nonsense and that it is not sensible for the country to implement them in their current condition.
	I am glad that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) mentioned the pig sector. I am very fond of it, because I used to breed pigs myself—albeit only four breeding Tamworth sows, which hardly made me a major producer. The pig sector has to compete in a totally artificial and unfair trading environment, as it is not getting the benefit from the high welfare standards that it has rightly introduced. I do not argue for one moment against the pig industry's welfare standards, but the issue of food labelling is critical. It has been pushed by the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon); I am a co-signatory to his Bill, which I support strongly. Until we let the consumer know and give them the confidence that they are buying meat produced in the most welfare-friendly environment, they will not have the option of choosing British and knowing that British is best. It is important that we give them that confidence.
	Others have mentioned the problems of regulation. We still vastly over-regulate the industry in too many ways. The Rural Payments Agency, which got itself into one heck of a mess—an absolute fiasco—recovered slightly, but I fear that it is getting back into a mess. All the indications from my constituents are that it is again not doing its job effectively. I ask Ministers to intervene now to stop it getting into yet another disastrous situation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit pik) mentioned abattoirs. What a nonsense it is, when we are trying to develop good welfare systems and reduce mileage, that we should be closing all our local abattoirs and create circumstances in which we have to move animals over long distances to go to the abattoir. That confounds common sense.
	My last point about the industry concerns marketing effectively and finding the right markets for our goods. I agree with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole about public procurement policy. However, I am not sure that I entirely accept his remarks about the effects of what we used to call the compulsory competitive tendering regime, which the previous Government introduced for local authorities. I seem to remember cases going before the courts where it was said that it was impossible to add a moral dimension to the tendering process because that was anti-competitive behaviour. That led to the absurd situation whereby one could not specify the origin of the produce or the standards that it was required to meet. Surely we can do something about that. We are now 15 or 20 years on from CCT, and it is now right that public procurement agencieswhether the military, local government, or the national health servicedo the right thing, which is to buy British, and to do so in quantity, to support our industry.
	Let me finish by linking agriculture to the environment. We need to have systems in place that do not go back to the encouragement of over-production but reward good practice in agriculture and environmental stewardship. We need to protect the marginal areas of production, such as hill farms, which are very fragile, and wetlands, which are very difficult to farm, and ensure that they can be farmed effectively, not only for the inherent benefits that that brings but for the better management of the land and the success of the communities in those areas. We should ensure that farmers are able to enter into agreements for whole river catchment area schemes to maintain wetlands in order to reduce floods.
	We should be encouraging farmers to be involved with anaerobic digesters. I remember arguing that case when I was a county councillor 20 years ago. I asked why on earth why we in this country did not have anaerobic digesters, as that was so obviously a better solution than many of the other forms of disposal. Yet the industry in this country is still in its infancy.

David Anderson: It has become quite normal for some people to believe that Labour Members have no interests in farming or rural issues. That idea was clearly put to bed by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey). I come from one of the oldest industrial areas in the country, but a large proportion of my constituency is rural, and I wish to pick up on some of the issues that have been raised in the debate.
	An issue that came to my mind while the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) was speaking was rural payments. It was like a bad ghost coming into the room. We probably had a smaller work load on that issue, but for the people concerned it was a serious problem. He said that it was possibly going to come back, and I hope that the Minister will get up to speed, so that if it does come back he can nip it in the bud and people will not have to go through what they did a couple of years back.
	In our area, farmers have done tremendous work. There is some really good partnership work, and we are developing the Great North forest across the whole north-east and down into Yorkshire. That is possible only because of the work of farmers who have been prepared to work with local authorities and organisations such as Natural England to make it a real success.
	Another example that comes to mind is the reintroduction of the red kite in my constituency. It was wiped out in the north of England sometime in the mid-1800s, and over the past five years there has been a tremendously successful reintroduction scheme. It is probably the first such scheme anywhere in the world where, within 3 miles of where the birds were introduced, there is an urban centrethe Metro centre, the biggest shopping centre in Europe. That scheme would not have been possible without the co-operation of farmers. There was great help from organisations such as Northumbrian Water, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and Gateshead council, but if local farmers had not been prepared to buy into the scheme, it would not have been the success that it has been.
	On the back of that, a red kite trail has been developed and is bringing tourists into the area. The local bus company has branded nine of its buses with the red kite, at a cost of 9,000 a bus. It has taken that cost on itself and won a national award, but it did not do it for that reason, it did it to publicise what was happening. The scheme has been very successful, particularly for young people. There are not enough kites for each school that wants to adopt one to do so, and we pray that the kites will get on and do what they should be doing. Some 94 were released, but there are a lot more than 94 now, thank goodness.
	The scheme has been a huge success, and there has even been feedback from the kites to the farmers. The farmers report to us that on a farm within 400 yd of what was a huge council estate, the red kites are now eating sheep's afterbirth when lambs are born. The farmers calculate that they are saved two days of work a year in cleaning up afterbirth, so the kites are already giving their thanks to the farmers for helping them flourish again. It really is a success story.
	I spend every moment that I canlike everybody else in this place, I do no have much timetrying to get away and get some peace. My place to go for peace is Teesdale, a fantastic area. To survive there is a tough job for the farmers, including hill farmers. Some Members in the Chamberlooking around, probably all of usare old enough to remember the story of Hannah Hauxwell, who was featured in a 1970s television documentary about where she was living in the dale. The conditions were very tough, and she had no running water and no electricity. Thankfully, most places there are not like that now, but some of the arctic conditions remain.
	There is a reservoir in Teesdale called Cow Green, and the weather station up there maps weather models like those of Reykjavik. That gives some idea of what the conditions are like. The people who work there are the salt of the earth. I have the great pleasure of meeting some of them in a fantastic public house called the Langdon Beck hotel. I would welcome the Minister there. If he really wants to see farming in the raw, he should go therewe would make him welcome. We disagree about many things in the House, but we should all agree that we owe a tremendous debt to the people who work the farms of this country. We should never forget that.
	I want to talk specifically about the dairy in Blaydon. This time last week, we thought that we were close to getting a deal to keep it open. The Secretary of State was very supportive and involved himself personally in getting the receiver to give us some breathing space last Thursday. We thought that there would be a deal. The union and the work force worked hard and the bank that was involved seemed to be saying all the right things. Sadly, on Friday morning, the news came through that the bank had decided not to go ahead.
	As I said in my intervention on the Secretary of State, there is a rumourI would like to think that it is just a rumour, not a factthat the plug was pulled because the bank account could not be put in place for four weeks. If we are facing that sort of bureaucratic nightmare in this country, the problem must be resolved. The outcome is that 299 dairy staff are out of work. The 288 farmers who fed into the dairy may, thankfully, have been relieved by the Secretary of State's words today. However, problems clearly remain for many people in the north-east. I hope that, if there is any more we can do, we are doing it.
	The regional officer for the FBUI mean the NFU; I said FBU because the former fire Minister is on the Front Bench. Dennis Gibb, the National Farmers Union regional officer, said about the impact of the dairy closure:
	The thought of Blaydon having to close down fills me with absolute horror... The worldwide milk market will be partly to blame. The world is saturated with dairy produce at the moment, which has undermined the milk price, which has of course made it more difficult... Over the last few years we have seen the gradual erosion of dairying in the North East and I fear this closure will be another hammer blow for milk production in this part of the world.
	I would like to think that that is not the case. If the Secretary of State and the Minister can do anything to support the reintroduction of the dairy business in the north-east, I urge them to do so.
	The debate on the rural economy on Monday was closed by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansdyke (Dan Norris). I cannot believe what he saidI thought he must have meant it as a joke. He said:
	It is difficult to provide any further information at this point, because the situation is very fluid.[ Official Report, 15 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 85.]
	The situation is not very fluid; it is very sad. I hope that the Minister can give us news about any possible help for the people in Blaydon. Even if the dairy cannot open, is there a role for DEFRA in helping those people try to find work?

Michael Jack: I compliment the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) on a moving speech, in which he alerted us to the importance of integrating the environment and farming in the context of the exploitation of his lovely part of Northumberland through the example of the red kite and the benefits of its reintroduction and farmers' work to sustain interest from urban dwellers in rural Northumbria. He also reminded us poignantly of the human situation, which has tragically evolved, of Dairy Farmers of Britain.
	The hon. Gentleman put his finger on a crucial issue as we debate some of the long-term factors that affect the security of supply of food and the short-term developments in the marketplace, which operates on a day-to-day and sometimes an hour-by-hour basis. One of the challenges that I would like to address is how to reconcile the long-term aspiration of a safe and secure food supply with the fact that, on the journey, the marketplace will have its ups and downs, as the hon. Gentleman just discussed.
	I stand before the House as the president of the Shepherd Road allotment society in my constituency. I know from bitter experience the genuine problems that the producers of agricultural produce have to face. In August, I face an army of caterpillars. If I am not there immediately to administer the coup de grce, that rampaging horde undoes all my hard work to ensure that I have a brassica crop ready to eat in the winter.
	I mention that little personal anecdote because when we consider the provision of food, we realise that we have all become entirely reliant on somebody else producing our food for us. More than 40 per cent. of our food spend in this country is outside the home. Mention has been made of supermarkets, and when we go down to Sainsbury's, Tesco or Marks and Spencer, we see that they are absolutely full, seven days a week, of an unbelievable array of produce.
	I can remember my mother taking me when I was a little boy in the '50s to a fruiterer's shop in York, where I grew up, and showing me an avocado pear. In those days they cost 1, which would be 10, 12 or 15 now. Today, people can buy avocado pears for less than 40p. They have become a commodity. In those days there was wonderthere was something different; there was seasonalitybut today we have a 52 weeks-a-year supply of a glittering array of produce, because the world of agriculture has so adapted to meet the demands of the consumer.
	That is one of the dimensions of the debate which has been missing to date, so let us reflect for a moment on what the 21st-century food consumer is asking of the supply chain, of which farmers are a key part. However, that perhaps also reflects the context in which I make that remark, because the food and drink industry in the United Kingdom is worth a staggering 162 billion. It generates the equivalent of 7 per cent. of our GDP and employs 3.7 million people. Food and drink is very big business. Depending on which estimate we use, the food part of the industry is worth somewhere between 65 billion and 80 billion. If we consider that on a global basis, we see that we are dealing with a very big industry indeed, which employs many millions of people globally, and that ensuring that the supply chains work on the 24/7, 365-days-a-year basis on which we operate is incredibly complicated.
	When we as politicians give our views about the industry, we have to take into account the aspirations of the consumer. Consumers want affordability, availability, high quality, variety and choice. They also want things that taste good and they want to know more about the provenance of their food. We could have a debate on any element in that list. Ensuring that we in this country enjoy the food that we have is a complicated business. Indeed, given certain other targets, which I shall talk about in a moment, we have some genuine challenges for the future.
	It is against that background that I want to address a remark that the Secretary of State made, which I wrote down. He said, I want British agriculture to produce as much as possible. One of the problems with which I have concerned myself, and which the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, also looks at, is the difference between the declaratory statements of politicians, who perhaps believe that if they say all the right supportive things, something will happen, and the policy levers that they have to pull to make things happen. Saying that we would like something to happen is very different from actually making it happen.
	One of the themes underpinning agricultural policy is a withdrawal by politicians from the decision-making processes by which farmers decide what to do with their land. The reforms of the common agricultural policy; compulsory modulation; the ending of payment schemes based on the quantity of agricultural produce that a farmer grows or, in the case of livestock, raises on his landthose days have gone. Farmers throughout the European Union now have to make their own commercial decisions. Because of the scheme under the mid-term review that we adopted, the United Kingdom is further down the road than more or less anybody else in Europe. Against that background, it is interesting that, in discussing the arguments that will shape the 2013 reforms, Mrs. Fischer Boel, the Agriculture Commissioner, is talking about possibly withdrawing the Commission's agricultural remit further, by not using the public's money for anything that affects what farmers produce.
	However, we face certain challenges that will pose important questions for political decision makers about how they can meet the consumer's aspirations for a safe, long-term, sustainably produced food supply, yet as legislators have less and less to do with the commercial decisions that farmers make daily. We understand from the debate on the Dairy Farmers of Britain that short-term fluctuations in the market could affect the long-term achievement of those aspirations. In this debate, we have heard about the restructuring of the dairy industry and about the decline in the number of pig producers and in the number of animals produced in the livestock sector in general. We can see the difficult interplay between the short-term market situation and the long-term aspirations of consumers, who hope that the decision makers will play their part in fulfilling them.
	Some of these matters have formed the work of the Select Committee. We have covered fields as diverse as animal disease, the reform of the common agricultural policy, the milk industry, and, more recently, pigs and the rural economy. The work that we are undertaking on food security at the moment is highly germane to this debate. I do not want to anticipate the findings of the Committee, because our work is still at a formulative stage. However, hearing a great deal of evidence on the subject has inevitably conditioned my own reaction to some of the issues that we have been discussing today.
	One of the most interesting aspects of this work was the Secretary of State's appearance before the Select Committee last November to talk about his Department's policies. Given that climate change had been removed from his Department's principal areas of activity, I asked him what his main priority had become. He hesitated briefly before answering, Food. It was almost as though DEFRA had rediscovered one of the key activities for which it was responsible. It is, after all, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I do not blame the Government for having attached a high priority to climate change issues, but I think that that had resulted in the Department taking its eye off the ball when it came to its food policies. The fact that we last debated this subject in Government time in 2002, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) reminded the House earlier, perhaps tells its own story.
	I am glad that DEFRA has rediscovered food, because the Select Committee was concerned about the joint DEFRA-Treasury document produced in 2005, which suggested, when discussing reform of the common agricultural policy, that everything would be all right because the world's markets would ensure supply and that we should not worry about food security. Only a short time later, in 2007, we saw the first signs of what became a major increase in world food prices, at which point real questions started to be asked about the world's food supply chain.
	A combination of crop failures in places such as Australia, the intervention of speculation in buying commodities such as wheat and rice, the sudden restrictive activities of countries such as Argentina, which decided not to export their products, and the rise in the price of fertiliser in China as it attempted to deal with its own agricultural problems meant that, after a decade of falling prices for food, we suddenly had a price spike. All of a sudden, decision makers around the world got very interested in food.
	In the United Kingdom, the Cabinet Office was commissioned to undertake a study. It produced a remarkable document which dealt with everything one ever wanted to know about food. It did not contain much about farming, but it had a lot about food. Then, we had Food Matters, another glorious publication from the Cabinet Office, after which DEFRA entertained us with the start of the process that the Secretary of State has said he will soon bring to a conclusion, with the publication of its own strategy. Behind all that, there has been a plethora of activities, meetings and all kinds of other things that I shall come to in a moment. So, all of a sudden, now that we have rediscovered food and had a kick up the backside from what was happening in the world markets, food security is marching up the agenda and we have to do something about it.
	What worries me is that, having got past the food price spike, we might well relax. It is perhaps worth reflecting on the fact that the world food price index produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation stood at 208 in April 2008, but had fallen to 143 just one year later. For cerealsa key ingredient of concerns about food and food securitythe index was at 274 in April 2008, but has dropped to 179 today. The paradox is that during that period, farmers responded and increased the amount of cereal that they were producing. Some American farmers produced perhaps a bit less biofuel, deciding that the food-fuel paradox could be put to one side for a moment, and we saw an increase in production. In the short termsurprise, surpriseprices fell.
	It is against that background that I draw again on my theme of the juxtaposition of the long-term supply challenges we face and the short-term operation of the market. The Rome summit of 2008 was a response to and addressed world food security issues. I had the honour of representing the Select Committee in Rome over two days, and it was a remarkable meeting. There was such a diversity of opinion that it illustrated the intermingling of complexity in dealing with food supply chain issues, the relationships between modern western agriculture and development issues, the problems of sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge of developing economies around the world and some of the important political issues that are starting to emerge and influenced the conference.
	Let me draw the House's attention to a worrying development, which was a sub-plot to what was going on in Romethe development of food colonialism. The phrase the world will supply in the vision document, to which I referred earlier, was predicated on the facts that organisations such as the World Trade Organisation would come to a conclusion, that we would have a more liberalised trade regime, that everybody would play fair and that the rules would apply. It is also very clearand borne out by the Select Committee's visit to Brazil during its recent inquiry into food securitythat an awful lot of international investors, particularly from countries such as China, are going around the world and buying up productive capacity in other people's back yards. International investment is making its way to places such as Brazil because of the country's huge potential, but that begins a transformation of the supply chain of food in the world in a way that could be quite threatening to our quarter of the globe.
	If we view that against the background of what we should be doing to bring us full circle back to questions about the common agricultural policy and our domestic agricultural policy, it is evident that we have a more complex situation to deal with. Let me make it even more complicated by saying that there was, sadly, no DEFRA representative at the conference; the Government were representedvery ably, I am sureby the Department for International Development. This demonstrated that the UK Government's perspective at the time of the conference was that it was more about development issues than about making a rounded response to food security issues.
	Targets were set at the conference by both the FAO and the UN General-Secretary, Ban Ki-moon, demonstrating that we needed a 50 per cent. increase in food production by 2030 and a doubling by 2050. That made me stop and think for a moment. I am getting on a bitI am in my last year in the House; this may be the last speech I deliver on a major subject. Here we are, I thought, nearly on the doorstep of 2010to make the maths rightand we need to achieve a 50 per cent. increase in our food supply in another 20 years. If we add on another 20 years, we have to double it.
	By the time we have addressed the technological and sustainability challenges and a good many policy issues, time starts to run very quickly indeed. When we add to that the complexity of global warming, which we discussed earlier today, we have an interesting mix with which to deal.
	When the Committee was working on its report, we went to Rothamsted and talked to the scientists there about the potential of UK agriculture. They made the point that while we are very good in the arable, livestock and dairy sectors, we should ask ourselves how we can maximise those advantages against the background of the demands of sustainability, but also within the complex world picture that I have painted.
	A fact from which we cannot run away in a debate such as this is that, however much we may urge our own Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to do all that it can to support UK farming potential, in a world of uncertainty where, for example, an unknown animal disease can suddenly decimate a particular part of our livestock sector and climatic change can dramatically alter the food chain, we must ensure that we have security at home. That does not mean saying, I want to keep out Johnny Foreigner's food, but it does mean saying, I want our population to be safely fed. We need to exploit both our nationalin the sense of large-scaleagricultural potential and our localised food chains, because that will add another dimension of security. If big fails, small can at least make its contribution. In our discussions about policy, we need to focus just as much on smaller-scale as on large-scale agricultural activity.
	Before I became a Member of Parliament, I made my living in horticulture. The enterprise for which I worked as marketing manager had 12,000 acres of horticultural crops to manage, and 400 acres that we grew. I understand what it is like to operate in the non-subsidised sectorto live or die according to one's ability to meet the demands of customers or consumersbut I recognise the incredible change undergone by our horticultural industry in order to survive. We have the world's largest indoor protected facility in Planet Thanet, which is a remarkable facility to have in this country. It shows that we can be innovative in a way that enables all parts of our agricultural potential to contribute to the task of securing our long-term food supply.
	I want to say a little about reform of the common agricultural policy. One of the subjects on which the debate on the Lisbon treaty, for all its controversial nature, chose not to alight was a change in the treaty obligations. I welcome the new Minister to his post. He follows the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), who did a great deal of work to get up to speed with a complex brief in as short a time as possible. One of the issues that he will have to tackle is the question of what drives Europe's agricultural policy.
	The question posed at Rothamsted can be widened slightly. What is the responsibility of western agricultural nations for meeting their share of the long-term targets that I mentioned earlier? That does not mean British Ministers going along and pledging an X per cent. increase in production. They cannot do that. It is not like setting an aspirational target; they must do something else to encourage our farmers to play their part in helping to meet the challenge. But what about the rest of Europe? We know how politicised French agriculture is, and how domestic Italian agriculture can be. We know that there is big agri-business in Germany. All those countries have very different perspectives, but they must all operate within the terms of the common agricultural policy.
	Article 38 of the Lisbon treaty refers to the establishment of a common policy for agriculture and fisheries. Article 39 states:
	The objectives of the common agricultural policy shall be...to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and by ensuring the rational development of agricultural production and the optimum utilisation of the factors of production, in particular labour.
	That is shorthand for Let's keep lots of small farmers in Germany going because it's politically difficult to do otherwise. It talks about assuring the availability of supply, and the particular nature of agricultural activity that results from the social structure of agriculture and from structural and natural disparities between the various agricultural regions. I could go on, but the treaty makes no mention of sustainability, climate change or the kind of global challenges we face. Commission officials and commissioners are fond of terms such as multi-functionality at which the eyes of most people in this country would glaze over, as they would not recognise it as an expression that tries to describe the integral role of agriculture in rural communities, providing the glue that holds them together.
	I am sad that the Lisbon treaty did not address the need to bring up to speed the approach that will guide the common agricultural policy for some time to come, and make it a 21st-century treaty obligation to help with the reform process, which must get real; in fact, the comments from both Front-Bench speakers about, for example, the pesticides directive, the tagging of sheep and so on illustrate the fact that in the short term the things that drive change in the CAP do not give much chance to enable Europe to address the fundamental questions in a part of the globe where we have a tremendous productive advantage and where, against a background of climate change, we will be able to produce. We will have water and we have good soil. We have the techniques and the technology, but what are we going to contribute to meeting the global targets when Ministers cannot press buttons to set targets for individual farmers?
	That brings me to the question of how DEFRA is organising itself to interact with that matter. One of the things on which we cannot fail the Government is that apart from the documents that I mentioned earlier, we now have a Cabinet Sub-Committee dealing with the matter; we have an official food strategy task force and a council of food policy advisers and so on. The only slight problem is that apart from the council of food policy advisers, nobody has a clue what the rest of these good people have been doing. Nobody knows how many times the ministerial Sub-Committee on food (DA(F)) has met, let alone what it has been discussing. I heard today on the radioI think on the Today programmethat we are in the decade of transparency. If we are, can we have some transparency about what this Cabinet Sub-Committee is actually doing? If DEFRA is using this as a chance to reassert leadership in terms of the UK Government, that is good, but can we know what it is actually trying to achieve?
	Rightly, the Department of Health is involved; dealing with food security means that we have to address questions such as how much food we do not eat and how much more food we should not be eatingthe obesity issue. Many of the business issues that affect our great food companies are more in the province of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills than that of DEFRA. I have touched on DFID, which is also important in the issue. The Sub-Committee is made up of the right players, but we need to know its agenda and what it has been doing.
	Likewise, I know through meeting people from the food industry that the food strategy task force's meetings pop up all over the country. I do not know what the outcomes of those meetings are, or what DEFRA has been discussing. The Department has a real opportunity to start achieving one of its objectives: helping the food chain to respond to long-term challenges and to know what the agenda is. I looked at DEFRA's own document Ensuring the UK's food security in a changing world, and some of the questions are so general as to make one wonder whether it has thought through some of the issues. However, I am sure that it has, and I look forward to the publication of the strategy, and I also hope that our Select Committee, which aims to have its report out before the summer recess, will be able to make a contribution to that exercise. We recognise that an agenda for action must be set, and that we will not solve all the problems of our food and farming industry overnight.
	I shall now concentrate on an issue that underpins all that I have said. In order for farming to achieve the aims and deal with the challenges of world food security, the Food and Agriculture Organisation targets, global warming, world disease, pandemics and the growth in population, and to do so in a sustainable way, it must have the right degree of knowledge. It is ironic that within the last few days we learned that Manchester United had sold Mr. Ronaldoyes, a talented footballerto Barcelona for, it is alleged, some 80 million, as that sum somewhat exceeds DEFRA's annual research budget. That puts into context where our priorities lie. The budget of John Innes, a remarkable research institution, is 25 million. It is among the world leaders in analysing the DNA of our plants and dealing with the diseases that could threaten crops on a global basis, yet how much money can it rely on annually from Government? The answer is 12.5 million. The other 12.5 million of its earnings have to be derived from competitive contracts. I want the best scientists we can get hold of to be working on these problems, for this country and also for the world.
	I say for the world because, although Rothamsted made it clear to us that the paucity of funding in this area is making it difficult for it to keep its talented scientists, we know that those that we have are recognised internationally as among the best. That is why the Brazilian EMBRAPA organisation, which handles all its agricultural research and spends some 375 million a year on research, has invested in an exercise called Labex at Rothamsted. It wants to work with our scientists to help solve its problems. That is an indication of the quality of our science, but it needs to have some support.
	I acknowledge that in addition to DEFRA's money, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council put 185 million into agricultural research, but the chief scientist, Professor Beddington, indicated that we needed to have an uplift of some 100 million a year of spending on agricultural research. Although the BBSRC sums have increased, we know from evidence that the Committee received from the National Farmers Union that between 1986 and 1998 there had been a 45 per cent. real-terms cut in publicly funded agricultural science in the UK. I say that that situation is unacceptable. A lot more investment than we are currently making is needed if we are seriously to take on the task of securing the world's, and our own, food supply, because we must have more knowledge if we are to learn how to increase sustainably, and securely so as to deal with crop disease, the potential of UK agriculture from, for example, our 4 to 4.5 acres a hectare arable to perhaps 9 or 10 acres.
	That came out when the Committee visited Pirbright to look at the whole question of how we can deal with the world challenge of transmissible diseases. When I found out that DEFRA had pulled out of the redevelopment of Pirbright, leaving that to the BBSRC but only giving Pirbright an annually renewable 5 million contract for monitoring animal disease, that told me that somewhere in the middle of Government we are, yet again, not getting right the sustenance of one of the world leaders in monitoring animal disease. We are the reference point in the world for foot and mouth outbreak. We are also dealing with avian influenza, bluetongue and West Nile disease, and various other diseases are out there champing at the bit to get into this country. We need to make our defences as strong as possible.
	If, when the new Minister is looking at his diary, he decides that he wants to spend a profitable morning, he should go to see what is being done at Pirbright, and he should visit Merial to see how to defend against animal diseases. That would allow him to understand without a shadow of a doubt why, if we are to be able, as we have been, to deal effectively with our animal diseases, and if the sharing is to mean anything in terms of cost, we must ensure that places such as Pirbright are properly equipped with the right scientists, we must reform the Institute for Animal Health properly, and we must establish a proper working relationship with the Veterinary Laboratories Agency. Those are high priorities for DEFRA if we are to have a comprehensive and viable livestock sector.
	Hon. Members will be aware that this is a challenging subject, and I shall conclude by making one or two observations about what we saw in Brazil, because it is sometimes extremely useful to see how other people do things. Brazil is very different from the United Kingdom. Brazil is an agricultural giant in terms of its potential. There, one can visit a farming enterprise that has 220,000 hectares under cultivation, which is, by my calculation, about 500,000 acres, and meet people who will say that they want to expandfor example, in soya, cotton or coffee productionby doubling the amount of land on which they operate. That is put into context by the fact that Brazil could bring into production anywhere between 90 million and 200 million hectares, which allows one to understand not only the potential but the need for capital, science, infrastructure development and sustainability. One can see the need for the west to give Brazil sufficient assistancebut not to direct itto safeguard the rainforest and ensure that the removal of certain forest areas and the turning of them into savanna is done in a sustainable way.
	All that emphasises the fact that if we are to draw a modicum of security from the fact that Brazil is out there with the potential to help our food supply, we need to contribute to what it is doing. Brazil takes its responsibilities seriously; it contributes to help sub-Saharan Africa deal with its agricultural problems and overcome the lack of productivity, the difficulty of post-harvest handling and so on. I make that point merely to say that the UK has a role to play in helping, but it also illustrates the global nature of food, farming and the environment, which is the subject of this debate. We cannot solve the problems on this subject on our own; we have to solve them, in policy terms, in both a European and a global context. We must develop the right bilateral relationships with other countries if we are to be assured of a safe, secure, affordable and sustainable supply of food, which would be a source of pleasure to consumers, and indeed electors, in this country.

Stephen Crabb: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate briefly in this extremely important debate. First, may I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to other hon. Members for the fact that duties elsewhere in the House have meant that I have missed portions of this debate?
	As has been noted, this is the first debate in Government time on food and farming in five or six years, so it is long overdue. There are some serious issues facing our food producers and our farming industry, and they have not been addressed sufficiently in Government time or in Opposition time on the Floor of this House in recent years.
	I genuinely welcome the new Minister to his post. He has an opportunity to recalibrate things and demonstrate again that this Government are committed to the UK's agricultural industry. Personally I could not care less whether he is a vegetarianthat has nothing to do with the issue; what matters is his commitment, and that of his Department and his ministerial colleagues. He has a fresh opportunity to show that.
	I wish to focus on two particular issues in the time available to me. The first is bovine TB, which has been mentioned this afternoon. Hon. Members should be in no doubt about what a disaster bovine TB is for many farmers up and down the country. It has hugely damaging consequences. I have sat with a farmer who has just lost his herd and seen his business subjected to huge movement restrictions, and that tough, practical man was reduced to tearsa very sad thing to see.
	The disease is spreading, as the most recent map of the disease zone shows. Farming representatives come here every year to lobby Members of Parliament and to speak to Ministers and officials. They can be forgiven for thinking that it is like Groundhog Day, as they keep making the arguments and providing the evidence, but see precious little real action. Given that the evidence base from which Ministers are working is the same in England as it is in Wales, why is it that the Welsh Assembly Government have adopted a differentand far more progressiveapproach to tackling the disease? I am not known as someone who lavishes praise on the Welsh Assembly, but they have got it right in this regard.
	I want a clearer explanation from the Government of why a targeted cull is still out of the question. Is it just because the politics are too difficult? That answer will not cut it with the farming community, which is sick of the issue and wants some real action and solutions. I encourage the Minister to address that question and to liaise closely with the Welsh Assembly Government to see what lessons can be learned.
	The second issue, which has been referred to several times by hon. Members, is the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain and, more generally, the state of the UK dairy industry. My first Adjournment debate, which I secured shortly after becoming a Member of Parliament in 2005, was on the state of the dairy industry, which is hugely important to my constituency. Dairy farming is woven into the very fabric of life in Pembrokeshire, but it lurches from crisis to glimmers of hopeso farmers start investing againback to crisis. Just in the last few days, I have received six or seven e-mails and letters from farmers in my constituency who have supplied Dairy Farmers of Britain and are under considerable financial pressure as a result of the collapse of that co-operative.
	One of those letters was from a medium-sized dairy farmer in my constituency, and it tells me of his membership arrangements with the co-operative. He says:
	I am a dairy farmer milking 110 dairy cows, and was a member of, and supplied our milk to DFOB.
	He says that his membership investment over the past seven years has seen
	32,000 deducted from our monthly milk chequethis figure was calculated based on our milk production figures.
	He continues:
	In October 2008, DFOB failed to pay the interest on our Membership Investment, stating that the global financial crisis meant that it was not prudent to pay the interest. This set alarm bells ringing
	as it did for other farmers in the area supplying that co-operative. His story goes on:
	From 1 November 2008, DFOB introduced a price cut of 2p per litrethis money was supposedly used to close down two of their factories...and put the company back on its feet. We estimate that this price drop cost us 10,000 from November to May.
	On 3 June 2009, DFOB went into Receivership, calling in PWC to administer the Receivership.
	He also says that between 3 and 10 June, PWCPricewaterhouseCooperswill pay him a nominal fee for his milk, rumoured to be about 10p per litre, but what really concerns him is what will happen to his main milk cheque, which should be more than 14,000. That will be lost, and other farmers in my constituency are in the same position of losing payment for a whole month's worth of milk production. Those farmers are in no position to lose that kind of money. They have been operating on a knife edge for some years, they have been trying to invest where they can and cash flow has been very difficult. To lose such sums of moneyan entire month's worth of milk paymentis very severe.
	I do not expect the Minister to be able to wave a magic wand, but will he inform the House what discussions he is having with his colleagues and the industry about how they can support farmers affected by the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain? I appreciate the financial constraints that he and his colleagues are under, and I do not think that anybody expects him to start writing cheques to bail out farmers who have been hit, but farmers want to see that the Minister is alive to the issue and is taking it seriously.
	In particular, I would welcome his thoughts on the behaviour of the banks in this case. One concern that several farmers have raised with me is the timingthe calling in of Dairy Farmers of Britain's loans in such a way that suppliers would lose that entire May milk cheque. I would welcome the Minister's response on that point.

James Paice: Indeed, my hon. Friend says the same, but whatever. We had a good timethat is the important thing. The cider was excellent. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome also referred to the importance of public understanding and knowledge of the industry.
	The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) made a heartfelt, moving speech. He spoke about the red kite, and I share his joy at the success of its reintroduction; it has been reintroduced all over the country, and not just in his part of the world. It is a great joy to drive up the M40 through the Chilterns and see them in the air, by the dozen sometimes. I was also touched by his reference to the debt that we all owe to farmers. If I may say so, it was all the more heartfelt and appreciated for coming from a Member on the Labour Benches. Many years ago, in the days when everybody had car stickers, there was one that said, Don't criticise farmers with your mouth full. That sums it up, in some wayswe should not forget that most of our food comes from them.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) raised the level of the debate to take in global issues, the international aspects of policy, trade and the development of agriculture. I want to come back to his comments about the common agricultural policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) referred to the harsh, difficult and personal aspects of bovine TB, and to Dairy Farmers of Britain; I wish to refer to both those subjects, as virtually every other Member has done.
	On Dairy Farmers of Britain, I said in the debate on Monday that I hope that those who are less enthusiastic about co-operatives than I am do not use the failure of Dairy Farmers of Britain as a stick with which to beat the concept of co-operation. I fear that the management of DFOB will have some pretty testing questions to answer in coming weeks. That is not an issue for us politicians; it is a matter for the former shareholders, and perhaps for DFOB's creditors and others. It seems quite clear that there have been some odd management decisions. Frankly, it has been an open secret for months that it was in serious trouble. I was told by the dairy industry back in September or October that DFOB would go down this summer; that was widely expected, and there are questions to answer.
	In the short term, the issue is the state of the supplying farmers. Obviously, it is extremely good news that such a huge proportion of them have found other outletsthat is greatand that the receiver has managed to sell some of the factories, despite the failure to find a buyer or a management buy-out for the Blaydon plant. However, we should not run away with the assumption that for the vast majority of the dairy industry everything will be all right. Apart from other issues, which I will come to, there is the fact that milk prices are falling, generally. The farmers who contract directly with supermarkets to supply liquid milk are paid a reasonable pricenobody would say that it was excessivebut those who are selling to the manufacturing side, which is half the marketplace for British milk, face much lower prices, with worse in prospect. Global prices for cheddar, skimmed milk powder and other products are low and falling.
	I wish to mention one of the issues that must be at the heart of the problems of our industry. I cannot fully understand why, with the major exception of Dairy Crest, British investors do not invest in British manufacturing. Other investors do. Mller, a German company, invested a large sum in the yoghurt plant in Shropshire, which is doing quite well, as are the producers involved. Arla, a Danish co-operative, came to this country and invested massively in our milk production. Yoplait has done the same. There are many other such examples, but where is the domestic investment? If we are to fight back against the imported dairy product market, we have to make that investment.
	The Secretary of State and others referred to food security. I am concerned that, in some quarters, the attitude still seems to be that the issue is just the flavour of the month, and that we can forget about it. Some of the conservation bodies are saying such things, which is a great shame, and is counter-productive. For all the reasons that the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde mentioned, food security is hugely important. No country can say, It's up to everybody else. Just as with climate change, we cannot say, We'll do our own thing and leave the matter to somebody else. Every single country on this planet has a responsibility to improve its food productionour country, too.
	I want to address something that has not been mentioned at all in the debate: set-aside and the question mark over whether the Government should allow the industry to address the issues raised by an abolition of the voluntary scheme or, as some would have it, a further move to a compulsory scheme. A consideration of where we go with set-aside gives us the opportunity to take a quantum leap forward. Over the past few years, set-aside has provided environmental gains, although that was not the intention behind it. The Government and most of the farming industry, as well as the conservation groups, wanted to retain that benefit, even though it had been achieved by accident, so the first idea was, Let's keep setting land aside. However, when we look at what else has happened, we find that although there has been considerable take-up of the entry level stewardship scheme, many farmers are saying that they will not continue with it and are fed up with the bureaucracy involved for relatively little money, so I fear for the scheme's long-term future.
	Whether we are talking about set-aside or the ELS, we know that we will miss most of our biodiversity action plan targets for 2010. The farmland bird index continues to decline, despite 16 years of set-aside, which we are told is important for such birds. We are missing the whole point. We need to be thinking about managing, maintaining and enhancing biodiversity on a whole-landscape basis, rather than having a situation in which some farmers opt in and others opt out, or taking bits of land out of production. We need to farm and manage our landscape in the way that has the best effect, but I am worried that the response to the consultation on set-aside showed that some, including Natural England, still say that there need to be targets on taking X thousand hectares of land out of production. We should be thinking not about such targets, but about genuine biodiversity targets. We should be looking at indicator species of birds, wild flowers and insects, and all other aspects of biodiversity and our wildlife. If we can start by getting the real targets that we want, we can then devise schemes and involve the whole industry so that rather than some farmers doing a bit and their neighbour doing nothing, they can work together. They are worth far more together than the sum of their parts because that can lead to such things as the creation of wildlife corridors between natural habitats. Everyone needs to engage to make a voluntary system work and to recognise the huge step forward that can be achieved if we can get that right.
	I do not believe that the future for farming lies in a choice between producing food or looking after wildlifewe must have both. However, if farming is to have a role in producing our food, we must make the marketplace work. I will not rehearse again the arguments that have been made about the importance of food labelling, and we have heard about public procurement. Although the Secretary of State was anxious to advance the improvementsno one can deny that any step forward is welcomethere is still a long way to go, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) clearly pointed out. To hark back to the milk market, although we have heard the Secretary of State refer to the fact that all the milk that we publicly procure is British, we must ask an interesting question: what price are our Government paying for liquid milk and how transparent is the supply chain?
	If we are to make the marketplace work, we need to consider the quality of imports. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole that public procurement can be dealt with through proper specifications, which is why we say that the specification should be the little red tractor standard. It cannot be the little red tractor itself, because that means that the product is British, which an import cannot be; however, we could lay down such a standard, and it would at least create a more level playing field for our producers.
	None the less, we would still have the absurd situation with the pesticides directive and thematic strategy, to which the Secretary of State referred, whereby our farmers will be prevented from using a range of active ingredients, yet we will still be able to import products on which overseas farmers have used them. That is ludicrous and patently daft. If there is a human health, animal health or animal welfare issue, the directive should apply wherever the food comes from and whoever grows it. Even if the risk is only to the operator, are we actually less concerned about an overseas spray operator than we are about a British operator? It is just crazy.
	These problems are not all in the future, either. In my constituency, manufacturers from the fresh product sector, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde referred because of his experience, are already withdrawing products; next year, some existing lettuce crop products, for example, will not be available. The problem is here and now and the Government need to claim whatever derogations they can.
	We also need to do more to make co-operatives work more effectively, and that is why I made my comment about DFOB. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, in his opening speech, also referred to supermarkets, and we strongly support the Competition Commission's proposed code, which the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned. It is a very robust code, but it must be properly enforced. I am not too worried whether it is enforced by an independent, self-appointed ombudsman who is paid for by the supermarkets, by the Office of Fair Trading or by anybody else; what matters is that the code is properly enforced.
	If the supermarkets genuinely care about long-term British food production, they have to think about their supply chain. When I speak to certain supermarkets, I find it quite galling when they say, Oh, we never buy any livestock in the market; it is all procured direct from farmers and we have a jolly good relationship with them. The directors may believe that, but it is not the case on the ground. I can take Members to livestock market after livestock market to talk to real auctioneers, who will say, That guy there is buying for Tesco. It is fair to say that those bullocks will not go straight from the market to the abattoir; they will go on to a farm for a weekand then they will go to the abattoir, together with dozens of other bullocks bought for Tesco from other markets to go to the same abattoir. Strictly, then, supermarkets are not buying directly from the market but, if anything stretches credibility, it is that sort of practice. When everybody knows such practices occur, it makes people take all the supermarkets' other protestations with a significantly large pinch of salt.

James Paice: I am not quite sure that I follow the hon. Gentleman. If he is saying that the Government should impose the ombudsman quickly, I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view. We certainly cannot let the current arrangements go on ad nauseam.
	Several Members referred to research and development, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde referred to the fact that DEFRA now spends less on R and D than Barcelona spent on Ronaldo. That puts the matter into some context. What is equally worrying is the fact that the amount has gone down dramatically. In one of DEFRA's own parliamentary answers, it said that its spend on agriculture R and D was down from 82 million in 2001-02 to 63 million last year. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has partly compensated for that, but the amount is certainly going in completely the wrong direction. Wherever I go, and wherever the Minister goes, as he will find as he gets into his job, he will find the industry saying that we have to invest more if we are to increase production from what, after all, is a limited and shrinking area of farmland in this country.
	Several Members have referred to electronic identification. The Secretary of State said that he had written to other Ministers and that he is successful in persuading the European Commission to put the issue on the agenda. However, little has been said, except by the Secretary of State, on the issue of cost sharing. I agree with him that last year's bluetongue exercise was a significant step forward in co-operation, but that does not have much to do with the Government's consultation on cost sharing, which does exactly what most of the industry feared it would doprovide justification for getting the industry to pay half the costs of the Government's current disease control system. That is the wrong way round, and it does not even take into account the possibility of delivering the strategy more cheaply. The industry must be involved in developing the strategy.
	The nitrate vulnerable zone issue has also been raised by a number of hon. Members. I cannot think of a more ridiculous piece of legislation. Of course it is true that it goes back to a directive that is itself long outdated; some of the science is hugely dubious. The Government should have gone back to the European Commission and said, Come on, let's review the directive on which this thing is based. The Secretary of State will go down in history as the politician who put national muck-spreading day into statutefour national muck-spreading days, to be precise. Laid down in the statute of the United Kingdom are four specific days on which farmers can start spreading their muck. It does not matter what the weather is, whether the farms are on flat or hilly ground, whether it is pouring with rain or there is bright sunshine or whether the county is in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria or Cornwallthose days are laid down in statute. What a ridiculous situation!
	The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) rightly raised the issue of fallen stock and the fact that sheep and scrapie have been taken out of the whole BSE equation. Why do we still require sheep to be removed? Why can we not return to the on-farm burial of sheep?
	Above all that hangs the whole issue of regulation. I do not suggest that the Secretary of State does not genuinely desire to lift the burden of regulation, but it is clear that it is not happening. One of the reasons is that the Government are still obsessed with processwith how one complies with a regulation, not with whether the necessary outcome has been achieved. That approach has to change; farmers have to be trusted. That is what we are trying to achieve, whether the issue is a lower nitrate level in ditches or higher standards of animal welfare. By all means, give farmers the target and tell them what they have to do; yes, jump on them if they do not achieve the objective. But do not lumber them with books and books of guidance, and inspectors to check whether the right boxes have been ticked. That is where the cost burden on business falls.
	Several Members have referred to our uplands, and nowhere could the plight of agriculture be clearer. There has been a huge flight of stock from the uplands. I want to stress how important it is that we keep an adequate level of stock in such areas. We need to keep farmers in the uplands, for socio-economic reasonsthey are important, and often the main part of the rural community. Furthermore, if the stock is not on the hills, there will not be the right vegetation; if that happens, the wildlife will go. Incidentally, gamekeepers are also important for the preservation of wildlife. If the wildlife is not there, the tourists do not come and the cycle continues in decline. All those issues are interlinked. We need to put more resources, even if from elsewhere, into the rural development programme for England and into the uplands.
	It would be lovely to have a debate on forestry, which applies to the uplands but also to the whole of Britain. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome touched on that issue, which falls within the broad subject area for this debate. Time, however, prevents me from addressing it.
	Members have referred to the Rural Payments Agency. I share the view of those who think that we are rapidly going back to the shambles that we faced at the beginning. Only this morning, I had a letter from a constituent who has still not received much money, and the payment window closes next week. In April I was promised a full reply from the RPA about what the problems areand there are many othersbut I still have not got it. All the indications are that it does not reply to letters from us, and it certainly does not deal with communications from our farmers; indeed, they regularly report that every time they phone up they get someone different. That was supposed to have been resolved years ago. There is also slowness of action in other spheres. As regards speciality produce, where the Government recently lost a legal case, the RPA is digging its heels in about implementing the legal decision.
	The rural development programme for England is hugely important. It involves a lot of money and, as I said on Monday, there are big question marks about how effectively it is being spentmost importantly, about how axis 1 is being spent. Axis 1 of the RDPE is about equipping our farmers for the future. It is about farm modernisation, improving their competitiveness, and enabling them to meet a future where there will be a declining single farm payment, which we would all see in our crystal balls as being inevitable. I hope that when the Minister has got his feet under the desk he will have a look at how ineffectively that money is being used in equipping farmers for a future where, as Mariann Fischer Boel has said, there will be a shift of resources from pillar 1 to pillar 2, and other major problems will need to be faced up to in the next couple of years.
	Our farming industry has, in one way or another, provided the food for the population of this country for thousands of years, and it is only right and proper that we expect it to do so for the future. It is not just an industry of some ancient, quaint past, but one with a massive part to play in the long-term future of our country. It will not always be as it has beenit will change. Farmers are learning to look after their soils betterto conserve organic matter because of its water retention properties, and to reduce erosion. If we look back using today's standards and values, we see that some practices of the past have proved to be wrong. There are huge challenges about fertility, with the decline in the supply of phosphates as well as nitrogen from fossil fuels. These are all big challenges.
	All the industry expects, if it is to play such a huge role in the food security of this country, is that wherever possible the Government get off its back and create a better environment with more research and a more understanding means of dealing with competition from abroad as regards regulation and cheaper, lower-standard imports. Given those opportunities, I am certain that our industry has a great and profitable futurebut, by goodness, things need to change to enable that to happen.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), who is highly regarded for his knowledge of and commitment to farming, as well as for his courtesy as a senior Member of this House. He spoke, as ever, with great authority and summarised many of the excellent contributions that we have heard; I agree with him wholeheartedly in that regard. I assure him that the Secretary of State will not miss any of the issues that were raised, which will be picked up from his officials, from  Hansard, or from meetings that he and I have planned in the days ahead.
	We know that English farmers are doing an essential job for us all. I am honoured to have been appointed to this job by the Prime Minister. I know that there have been many raised eyebrows given the view of some that, as an inner-city MP, I may have a credibility gap to overcome. I was a child of the '50s and '60s, like the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). I was brought up in a more respectful age, and I was brought up to admire and revere the countryside, even from the Gorbals, Pollokshaws and Pollokshields in Glasgow. I know that in my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), I have a hard act to follow. I hope that I will be able to live up to the standards that she set and the expectations of those who are watching us all.
	This morning, I was fortunate to be able to visit the farm of Mr. Peter Kendall and his brother Richard in east Bedfordshire. We received the hospitality of Peter's wife Mrs. Emma Kendall, who provided tea, toast and coffee to me and my officials, which was most welcome. We went to hear at first hand about the issues facing the farming industry today. They are proud of what they are doing, and rightly so. Listening to them and to others whom I have met in my first week or so in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I have become more aware of the challenges that we need to address. Set-aside, which the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire mentioned, was high on the agenda this morning. As I am sure he is aware, the Secretary of State is scheduled to announce his conclusions on that before the summer recess.
	Notwithstanding the challenges, at the same time there are real opportunities to ensure that we meet our agreed long-term vision for the farming sectora thriving industry that is resilient and focused on sustainability. There are challenges facing the industry, however, and we are taking steps to address them. For example, I was pleased last week to be able to chair the pig meat supply chain taskforce, which was established earlier this year. It is looking to address some of the challenges that right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned. The long-term sustainability of the pig industry must be safeguarded, as it has a significant contribution to make to a thriving farming sector and a sustainable, secure and healthy food supply that offers consumer choice.
	I know that many farmers are concerned about the need for proportionate, sensible legislation. We share their concerns about the implementation of the electronic identification of sheep, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned at great length. He said that although there are benefits, such as enhancing disease control and providing management benefits for the keeper, the costs of EID outweigh the benefits for the industry as a whole. We are working with the industry to find a way to implement EID, as he outlined, while minimising the burden.
	Climate change is another key issue for agriculture. The agricultural, forestry and land management sector is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, being responsible for 14 per cent. of total global emissions and 7 per cent. in the UK. I have taken to heart the warning on Monday from the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire not to hide behind a barrage of statistics, but one has to refer to some statistics in any contribution. The Government are currently developing a policy framework to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural sector.
	Further, we are committed to making the most of the potential of anaerobic digestion to contribute to climate change policies and wider environmental objectives. The aim is to publish by July an implementation plan on practical measures identified by the task group on the matter, chaired by Mr. Steve Lee.
	English farming has an important part to play in ensuring our food security, which many colleagues have mentioned this afternoon. The types of food that we eat, the cost of food and ensuring the supply of food have become hot topics. It is not simply a matter of domestic self-sufficiency. In response to questions asked by the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said on a number of occasions, including today, that he wants British agriculture to produce as much as possible, provided that consumers want what is produced and that the way in which our food is grown both sustains our environment and safeguards our landscape.
	Food labelling has a part to play in that, so we are pressing the food industry to provide clear and accurate origin information. My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree, met representatives of the food industry, including retailers, to stamp out inaccurate labelling practice. The pig taskforce has started to consider solutions to help halt such practices, including developing a voluntary agreement for the whole pig meat supply chain. In parallel, the Food Standards Agency is carrying out more detailed research into consumer behaviour in relation to origin labelling and the uptake of the origin labelling guidance that it issued last November.
	We are also pushing forward in Europe with supporting the European Commission's proposal to tighten up origin labelling and claims such as British bacon. No options have been ruled in or out of our consideration of what more can be done to improve origin labelling for meat.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I hear my hon. Friend's point. As he said, DCLG takes a lead on that, but our officials and Ministers obviously have an interest in such matters too.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole also asked whether we should or could include an animal welfare criterion in our public procurement. I can inform him that one of the sub-groups of the pig meat supply chain taskforce, which I mentioned I chaired last week, is looking at precisely that issue and exploring how we can step up the public procurement of products made with higher welfare standards. We agree entirely that the criterion that he outlined should be a consideration.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said that no Minister had attended the Royal Bath and West show for several years. I can only apologise on my predecessors' behalf, although I am pleased to be attending the royal show on 7 July and the Royal Norfolk show next week. I give as strong as a commitment as I can now to attend the Royal Bath and West show next year, but it may be immediately before the general election or immediately afterI am not quite sure which month it is in. I believe that purdah got in the way of an attendance this year; otherwise I understand that a Minister was committed to attend.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about his concern at the decline of the dairy sector. However, as we have mentioned previously, the long-term prospects are encouraging. To put that in context, dairy farmer numbers have been reducing at a fairly steady rate in the UK for many years, as they have across the EU. On the other hand, milk production stayed relatively steady from the end of the milk marketing board in the early 1990s until 2003. Since then, there has been a steady decline, from a little over 14 billion litres a year to somewhere under 13 billion litres a year. The latest quarterly figures show a decline of just over 1 per cent. That is against a backdrop of extreme volatility in prices in the global market, with record prices in 2007-08, followed by a steep decline in 2008-09, which was driven by the global economic downturn and increased supply. However, as I heard yesterday at the dairy forum, UK dairy farms are among the most competitive in Europe and, in the medium term, are well placed to take advantage of continuing deregulation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon raised a number of issues. I am delighted to hear of the success of the red kites locally, and I acknowledge his invitation to visit one of his local establishments to enjoy the fare. He talked in his speech about the banks and the Dairy Farmers of Britain, as he did when he intervened on our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I assure him that all that can be done is being done, and I am sorry that I can add little to what my right hon. Friend said earlier, other than to say that One NorthEast called DEFRA officials this morning. It has worked closely with the National Farmers Union, using a funded project within the English food and farming partnership, to help to put small farms together with local dairies, now that the dairy at Blaydon has closed. That has been quite successful, and the increased work for the small dairies has enabled them to take on 10 ex-Blaydon employees, so there has been some take-up of the unfortunate individuals who lost their jobs through the collapse of Dairy Farmers of Britain.
	The right hon. Member for Fylde is not only highly regarded as the Select Committee Chair; more significantly, he now serves as the president of the Shepherd Road allotment society. We acknowledge the challenge that he faces from caterpillars, and wish him success in dealing with it. He mentioned his memories of the 1950s, and I have already mentioned mine. However, I do not remember seeing avocados in Glasgow. I am sure they were probably there, but I have no memory of my mum taking me to see the price of them.
	The right hon. Gentleman made some significant points about food security, food production and food neo-colonialism. His warnings were telling, and serve only to reinforce the fundamental importance of this debate to what is happening in the real world outside. He raised the question of the common agricultural policy and my need to work hard to get up to speed on that subject, as my predecessor did. I can assure him that I have a lot of homework to do before the Agriculture Council next Monday and Tuesday in Luxembourg. I have already spoken today to the outgoing Czech presidency and the incoming Swedish ministerial presidency in advance of those events next week, and I shall be receiving quite a lot of briefing tomorrow and over the weekend.
	The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) talked about bovine tuberculosis and about Dairy Farmers of Britain. I think that I have covered those points as best I can, but in answer to his question about the different policy of the Welsh Assembly Government, he will know that that is a result of devolution. Policies differ between Cardiff, London and Scotland as different conclusions are arrived at, but, as the Secretary of State said, the matter is under close consideration and will continue to be so.
	The hon. Gentleman said that this was only the second debate on these matters in six years, and the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire said that when I get my feet under the table I will be able to study the issues a lot more. I have to say that if every other week is going to begin with a farming debate on the Monday and finish with another on the Thursday, I am not going to have time to get my feet under the table or to do any further study. I am sure, however, that the pace will not be quite as hectic as it has been in the past few weeks.
	I hope that I have provided some additional clarity on what the Government are doing, but we cannot and should not do it alone. We will continue to work in a strong partnership with farmers and the representative bodies, and I look forward to helping to continue to build that partnership over the coming months. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I am proud to be the Minister of State at DEFRA with responsibility for food, farms and the environment. Without guaranteeing agreement on anything, I hope to be an effective champion in the Government for farming, but I suspect that that is a judgment that others will have to make.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House has considered the matter of food, farming and the environment.

Barbara Follett: What I have been told is that the capital receipts from the sale of Broadfield House would be used. I shall clarify for my hon. Friend exactly what that means in a letter. I take her point that if we are talking about the smaller amount of money that she has mentioned, I do not think that that would go far enough.
	The feasibility study will examine the Broadfield House museum closure and the Red House Glass Cone museum proposal in depth. The council assures me that it will not make a decision until it has received the final report, and that no decision has yet been made. Since the future of Broadfield House museum and the Stourbridge glass collection has been brought to my attention, I have asked the Department's lead agency on the museums sector, the MLA, to work with Dudley metropolitan borough council to ensure the best outcome for the council and for the people of Dudley. Dudley Council welcomes the MLA's involvement, and both organisations have been working together to ensure that this feasibility study is robust, has a clear vision and takes into account the views of the local community.
	As I have said, the MLA has met with a range of interested parties, including my hon. Friend and the local glass bodies. The MLA believes that the feasibility study will be very thorough, including investigations into the issues that my hon. Friend has raised, such as security, display facilities, accessibility and other on-site facilities, as well as overall cost-effectiveness. The MLA's chief executive recently visited the Red House Glass Cone site and, like my hon. Friend, described the museum as remarkable. He believes that it would be possible to extend the displays and interpretation by including collections from Broadfield.
	As my hon. Friend will know, the MLA has developed a real capacity to engage in local issues and to forge good relationships across the sector. Its ground-breaking Renaissance in the Regions programme aims to transform England's local museums by using funding from the Government to raise standards and deliver real results in support of education, learning, community development and economic regeneration. The programme has had investment of 242 million since 2002, and it is beginning to make our museums great centres of life and learning, which people want to visit. I want to ensure that that is the case in Dudley, too.
	I assure my hon. Friend that although the Government cannot intervene directly in this matter, I am watching progress very closely. I have met with the MLA's chief executive and spoken to him about it, and I am taking the whole matter very seriously.